Long Island City’s up-and-coming life sciences sector has notched an expanded lease for a growing tenant.
Opentrons, a firm that builds lab robots for biologists, nearly doubled its office space at 45-18 Court Square to just shy of 94,000 square feet, the Commercial Observer reported.
The expansion comes less than a year after Opentrons first set up shop in the LIC building known as Innolabs. The company moved to the facility from Dumbo, Brooklyn last September, signing on to a near 48,000-square-foot space at $85 per square foot.
Opentrons’ initial lease encompassed the building’s second floor. The new terms add 46,179 square feet to that footprint, allowing the robot-maker to take over the building’s entire third floor.
A spokesperson for the building declined to disclose the lease’s asking rent or length to the Observer.
The recent signing is the latest boost to Long Island City’s standing as a life sciences hub.
Read more
Commercial
New York
Boston, San Francisco lead surging life sciences market
Commercial
New York
Longfellow inks first NYC purchase with stake in LIC life sciences property
In December, Longfellow Real Estate Partners dropped $95 million, or $475 per square foot, on a majority stake in 43-10 23rd Street, a 200,000-square-foot property the developer plans to transform into a life sciences facility.
CBRE’s life science practice leader John Isaacs told the New York Business Journal last month the Queens neighborhood has emerged as a hotbed for new tenancies. He called the area a “relief valve” with clusters of the sector’s players taking more affordable spaces than the inventory Manhattan has to offer.
[CO] — Suzannah Cavanaugh