Biogen Idec confirms move to the suburbs
Biogen Idec Inc., a biotechnology company, confirmed that it is relocating its corporate headquarters from Cambridge to Weston.
A company spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail that Biogen Idec had recently signed a lease for 350,000 square feet of undeveloped office space at the junction of Routes 20 and 128/95 in Weston; the move is likely to take place in either the late summer or the early fall of 2010, she added. About 400 to 600 company employees will be affected by the move.
In October, Biogen Idec said it was considering such a move.
Earlier this month, a Globe story noted that so many Cambridge biotech companies have fled to the suburbs in the past year that there is now a shortage of suburban lab space; cheaper lab space was one advantage that the suburbs had to offer over high-rent Cambridge.
To read more Globe stories about Biogen Idec, please click here.
(By Todd Wallack and Chris Reidy, Globe staff)
It is regrettable that Mr. Wallack continues to push his tendentious thesis that, to paraphrase the great Yogi Berra, no biotech firms remain in Cambridge because it's too crowded.
Somehow, this blurb fails to note that BiogenIdec is locked into the space it's vacating in Cambridge, and intends to hang onto it. The company needs more space to accommodate its continued growth. Over the decades since it was founded in Cambridge, the cost of space in the Kendall Square area has soared because proximity to academic research institutions and other R&D operations is a scarce and valuable asset. So instead of leasing expensive administrative space in Cambridge, Biogen is relocating its purely administrative functions to the suburbs. And what's happening to the huge amount of space it's vacating? Well, that's what's missing from this story. It's turning it into laboratory space.
In most cities, the maturing of a homegrown industry like biotech would be celebrated. From its humble roots in the abandoned industrial space of Cambridge, biotech has grown into a regional engine of economic development. As a consequence of the industry's growth, cheap and flexible space, once one of Cambridge's prime assets, is no longer abundant. So companies of all kinds are reassessing their costs. Increasingly, Cambridge is home to early- and mid-stage ventures, which have little in the way of administrative overhead and simply can't do without the ready access to talent. It is also a hotbed of R&D, attracting new multinationals every year. In other words, the space in Cambridge is now so valuable that most companies can only justify using it for operations that would suffer if located anywhere else. That, Mr. Wallack, is a good thing.
And so are its consequences. Long confined to the banks of the Charles, biotech firms are now spilling out into the suburbs and into redeveloping areas of Boston (well, at least when they manage to line up financing). That has long been the hope of regional planners. The proper response to this development isn't dismay (biotech abandons Cambridge!) but rather, delight (burgeoning sector buoys region!). Now if only we could build a regional transportation infrastructure that could actually serve to tie together Cambridge and its environs, we might really be on to something....