Oxford Properties Group and Pioneer Group have launched incubator laboratory space and serviced offices at Victoria House in Bloomsbury Square.
The duo is actively negotiating potential letting opportunities with firms already signed up, including Aavantgarde Bio, Caeruleus Genomics, Xterna, Curecraft, Emles Bioventures, Implexis, Forcefield, Precision Life, Deep Mirror, Warn & Co, M:M Bio, Melio Bio and Neurocentrx.
The incubator space features equipment and tailored facilities, shared instrumentation, a cell culture suite, utility room and cold storage, all of which are enabling knowledge-sharing and scientific innovation.
All these businesses join Victoria House’s anchor tenant, the BioIndustry Association, which located its global headquarters within the building a couple of years ago.
The move comes as the developers are pressing ahead with the final stage of the building transformation, which is due to complete before the end of this year. The facility spans a total of 220,000 sq ft of grade A wet lab-enabled life sciences space, including 91,000 sq ft of speculative turnkey labs, 70% of which will be delivered this summer.
Miranda Knaggs, corporate development director at Pioneer Group, said: “Biotech entrepreneurs often need to commit to multi-year leases, large footprints and expensive lab build-outs when they aren’t even sure they have a viable product yet. The flexibility of our incubator and serviced office offerings are filling a gap in the market and the latest phase of our business plan is playing out better than expected.”
Antara Woodring, vice president for life sciences at Oxford Properties, said: “Our North Star for Victoria House has always been the creation and curation of a dynamic ecosystem comprising life sciences organisations of all sizes and maturities within one beautiful and inspiring vertical campus. Located in the vibrant heart of London, the project benefits from transport connections that are incomparable in this sector and enable excellent national and international collaboration.”
CBRE and JLL act as joint leasing agents.
Image @ Oxford Properties
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