Trammell Crow is reaping the benefits of a biopharma company’s success as it expands to a new 17,000 square foot space within the developer’s biosciences office, Fulton Labs.
Grove Biopharma started out sharing space with an incubator for life sciences firm known as Portal Innovations, which occupies the full 10th floor of Trammell Crow’s Fulton Market building at 400 North Aberdeen Street.
When Grove scored $30 million in series A funding this month, it spurred the startup’s expansion into its new, larger space within the building, which is part of the two-building Fulton Labs project that also includes Trammell’s nearby 1375 West Fulton Street. Grove develops medicines for patients with cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and rare disorders.
The tenant’s real estate consumption has grown from a university spinoff into its new space, a route that life sciences developers have tried to help carve out and profit from in Chicago, to varying degrees of success.
“Grove Biopharma is the perfect example of the thesis we planned our Fulton Labs campus around,” Morgan Baer Blaskao of Trammell’s Midwest unit said in a press release. “It’s a company that spun out of Northwestern [University], then moved to Portal Innovations for incubation and the support ecosystem and is now moving into a large science-ready lab suite to accommodate further growth.”
Trammell Crow has invested heavily in life sciences offices in the Chicago area with over 1.2 million square feet of office space across several properties including Evanston Labs and Hyde Park labs.
The sector benefits from access to Northwestern University and the University of Chicago and was seen as a safer bet during the pandemic than traditional office space.
But concerns of oversupply have deterred further development across the nation.
A megadevelopment led by Sterling Bay known as Lincoln Yards began with a life sciences building next door to the firm’s vacant riverfront lots, and it has yet to sign any tenants while the rest of the project is stalled. Earlier this month, Sterling Bay handed a 27-acre parcel back on the north side of the Chicago River across the water from the life sciences property to its lender, Bank OZK, leaving the future of the site in limbo.
And other developers have changed course before breaking ground. Last year, Chicago-based Fulton Street Companies pivoted from a life sciences development to a two-tower complex with over 1,000 dwelling units at 1200 West Fulton Street.
Dan Lyne of CBRE represented Trammell Crow and Jonathan Metzl and Chip Evans of Cushman & Wakefield represented Grove Biopharma in the recent lease expansion.
Other tenants in the building include clean chemical developer Mattiq, the Chan-Zuckerberg BioHub, the Chicagoland Climate Investment Alliance, quantum computing company P33, medical device company Rhaeos, and Illinois Tech.
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