Shire pays $200m for lab buildings
Deal gives further boost to commercial real estate sector
Drug maker Shire Pharmaceuticals is buying four buildings in Raytheon’s former Lexington campus along Route 2 for more than $200 million, marking a major move forward for the recovering commercial real estate market.
The transaction is the largest purchase of laboratory space in the region’s growing life sciences sector, real estate officials said.
Shire and another biotech company are already tenants in the buildings, which made them an attractive investment to a slew of bidders. But the pharmaceutical giant won out in the end for the 435,000 square feet of laboratory space in the campus, which is known as Lexington Technology Park.
The deal also includes an option for Shire to build on adjacent land that could host up to 370,000 square feet of space, according to people involved in the transaction who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Neither Shire nor the technology park’s owner, Patriot Partners LLC, would comment on the deal.
In addition to being the biggest sale ever in the local life sciences sector, it is also the biggest transaction so far this year within the broader commercial real estate market, as large deals have been scarce in the down economy.
“There has been a lot of interest in these buildings,’’ said Robert Griffin, of the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, which marketed the property for Patriot Partners. “Life sciences is a very sought-after asset class right now.’’
Lab space in general has been a more active part of the commercial market than office space, which has suffered due to job losses at financial services firms and other large employers. Biotech firms such as Shire and Genzyme are growing, and Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Biogen Idec are hiring to fill vacancies at their companies, according to a recent report by the real estate firm Richards Barry Joyce & Partners. The report indicated the vacancy rate for laboratory space in the Boston region is 13.3 percent, compared to 14.5 percent and growing for offices in the region.
Richards Barry Joyce represented Shire in the company’s purchase at Lexington Technology Park.
The park is spread across 100 acres at the intersection of routes 2 and 128. Raytheon sold the site to Patriot Partners in 2002, and its buildings have since been renovated..
In November 2009, the town of Lexington voted to support an additional 380,000 square feet of development within the park, helping to clear more room for biotechnology companies to expand there.
Shire began relocating operations from Cambridge several years ago and in 2008 launched a $460 million campaign to build a campus there and add 750 jobs.
It held a ceremony Wednesday to mark the completion of a 200,000-square-foot manufacturing facility on the property.
The firm has also broken ground on another 150,000-square-foot facility expected to be completed in two years.
Casey Ross can be reached at cross@globe.com. 
