Traditional office space may be readily available post-pandemic, but lab space, well, that’s another subject entirely. As Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood continues to become “life science central,” new office and lab space is a welcomed addition.
Most recently, two 15-story towers known as Dexter Yard have created net-new lab space. The 528,000 square feet is already starting to fill up with biotech companies and an expansion of the Allen Institute. A little more than half of the space is offices; the rest (about 220,000 square feet) is dedicated to labs.
Tenants include the single-cell sequencing company Parse Biosciences, gene therapy startup Shape Therapeutics and Monod Bio and Outpace, which focus on protein engineering.
Located at 700 Dexter Avenue North, the towers are across the lake from the sprawling Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center on the lake’s east side. Next to Dexter Yard is an almost three-acre spread that is also slated to become a life science campus.
The new space has opened up the once-tight market for research facilities. More than 1.6 million square feet of new life science is under construction. About half is already pre-leased. The vacancy rate for lab space citywide is 7.1% as pandemic-related research winds down.