BOSTON—SGA, a national firm whose work spans architecture, interior design, planning, branded environments, and virtual design and construction, today announced that the first purpose-built, Class-A lab building in Somerville, MA, designed by the Boston and New York City-based architecture firm, recently celebrated its grand opening.
The nine-story, 289,000-square-foot Class-A lab building is part of the Boynton Yards, a 1.8-million-square-foot, mixed-use life sciences and cultural community, which is being developed by a joint venture between DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners (DLJ), Leggat McCall Properties (LMP) and Deutsche Finance America (DFA).
Designed by architects SGA and Hashim Sarkis Studios, the building was conceived with flexibility and sustainability in mind for emerging life sciences and technology companies. Each floor has 35,000 square feet of column-free floor plates surrounding the building’s core, offering tenants flexibility to grow and redesign their space to meet the needs of their workforce. The building will achieve LEED Gold and WiredScore Platinum certifications, a testament to the sustainable and highly efficient design approach.
“This is truly a world-class, state-of-the-art Life Sciences, Lab and R&D building. We’ve enjoyed working on this, the first purpose-built lab building in the area,” said SGA Partner John Sullivan, AIA. “We also enjoyed working with the development team as well as the general contractor, Shawmut Design and Construction, and other partners.”
Officials from these companies were joined by the City of Somerville and Flagship Pioneering companies to cut the opening ribbon on 101 South Street on Thursday, May 5, 2022. The building was pre-leased prior to completion to Flagship Pioneering, a bioplatform innovation company headquartered in Cambridge, to meet critical growth needs for its companies Tessera Therapeutics, Laronde, Cellarity, and Generate Biomedicines. These tenants occupy 280,000 square feet on eight floors of the building.
The first of four master-planned life sciences buildings, 101 South Street offers best-in-class, high-efficiency infrastructure where companies can imagine and grow. The nine-story, 289,000-square-foot building offers state-of-the-art R&D lab/office space, a fitness center, bike amenities, four levels of below-grade parking, and on-site retail offerings. A ground-floor conference center, as well as with Arts and Creative Enterprise space (ACE) within the building and centered in the “Hive” at 561 Windsor Street, are available for use by tenants and the Somerville community. Coming this summer, Firefly and Portico Brewery will open, serving food and beverages.
“Usually when we hold a ribbon-cutting, we’re celebrating one new great thing, like a library renovation or a new monument. But the opening of 101 South Street reflects how civic leadership, a community-driven development process, and private investment can also work together to advance multiple community goals at once,” said Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne. “Not only will this project establish a vital new anchor for life sciences in our region, it will bring with it jobs, innovation, new tax revenues, leading-edge sustainable construction, new open space, contributions to our affordable housing and jobs trusts funds, and ultimately the Boynton Yards project area will also support new housing and artist and maker space creation as well. That’s a lot of items on our checklist, and I applaud everyone that helped us get here.”
John Fenton, Managing Partner at DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners added: “It’s hard to believe that in the 1800s, this was an unsustainable industrial site where Somerville and Cambridge immigrants worked in meatpacking factories and brickyards, often facing low wages and substandard lodging. And now we stand here with the top scientists and researchers in the world who have chosen Somerville and Boynton Yards as their new home for cutting-edge, life-saving work.”
“Boynton Yards is the first Class-A, mixed-use building to serve the growing need for life science lab space near Kendall Square and the greater Cambridge area,” said Rob Dickey, Executive Vice President at Leggat McCall Properties. “We’re pioneering a progressively built environment that brings the community inside the orbit of where life-changing discoveries are taking place every day.”
