Rockville, MD – One of the highest-quality biotech manufacturing facilities in the mid-Atlantic region is set to go on the market for lease by a large-scale user.
Scheer Partners Inc., a leading provider of commercial real estate services in the greater Washington and Baltimore metropolitan areas, announces today that it has been retained by Human Genome Sciences Inc. (HGSI) to market a 175,000-square-foot portion of HGSI’s headquarters in Rockville that includes manufacturing, laboratory and office space.
HGSI, whose clinical development pipeline includes novel biotechnology drugs to treat hepatitis C, lupus, inhalation anthrax and cancer, is looking for a tenant to lease Wing C of its corporate office at 14200 Shady Grove Road in Rockville.
The departing occupant of this space is Gaithersburg-based MedImmune LLC, one of the world’s largest and most successful biotech companies that markets several products, including Synagis and FluMist, and has numerous more in the clinical development pipeline.
In March of 2007, HGSI and MedImmune – two anchors of Maryland’s thriving biotech community – announced that MedImmune would lease space at HGSI’s headquarters for its development and manufacturing of clinical trial material for cell culture-based seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccine. MedImmune’s lease for this space ends July 6.
Robert Scheer, the founder and president of Scheer Partners, and Matt Brady, a company vice president, are representing HGSI in the marketing of Wing C, which is owned by San Diego-based BioMed Realty Trust Inc.
“We are excited and honored to work with Human Genome Sciences on this marketing assignment,” Scheer says. “This is not your classic lab space. While it is part of the HGSI headquarters campus, this space is really a stand-alone building designed for one tenant.”
Ideal tenants for Wing C include a national contract manufacturing organization that is looking for a secondary site or perhaps is in search of a new headquarters that contains administrative offices, manufacturing capabilities and lab space in one centralized location.
“We’re speaking to a very select audience,” Brady says, noting that building this type of facility from scratch would likely cost $800 to $1,000 a square foot. “Economically speaking, it’s a pretty sound decision for someone to come in and take this space. There’s a ton of flexibility. Two separate manufacturing processes could simultaneously occur. It’s very scalable.”