According to BioForward Wisconsin, the biohealth sector is a high-quality job generator for Wisconsin — with 129,000 employees earning an average annual wage 70% higher than the state’s private sector average, and biohealth’s 10.6% job growth leads the state. Wisconsin also matches overall growth rates in the national biohealth industry and has outpaced the country in two subsectors: drugs and pharmaceuticals, and research, testing, and medical labs.
“There’s 0% vacancy for lab real estate in Madison, so our biotech companies don’t have the space to grow,” says Zach Slagle, director of development at Madison-based SARA Investment Real Estate, which recently announced the development of Velocity Station.
The new $60 million, 159,000-square-foot lab facility will be built on 6.36 acres formerly occupied by the now-demolished Clock Tower Office Park on Odana Road. Velocity Station was designed by EUA | Architecture, Engineering + Design and will be constructed by Ideal Builders with 16-foot ceiling heights, 100 pounds per square foot of load capacity, and abundant capacity for plumbing, electrical, and HVAC requirements. The building will have a common lobby connecting two three-story wings with floorplates measuring 25,000 square feet. Construction, expected to take 16 months, will begin once an anchor tenant is secured.
Velocity Station will showcase a modern undulating facade with high visibility from the Beltline, and it is ideally situated in the heart of the biotech cluster between University Research Park (URP) and Exact Sciences Corp. “It’s symbolic of the changes happening in Madison that, in the place where a 1970s office park once stood, we’re building this class A lab facility,” Slagle says.
Biotech is a niche segment within commercial real estate because of the higher associated costs and smaller tenant pool. According to SARA Investment Real Estate, there are only a handful of privately funded projects like Velocity Station in the Midwest. SARA’s portfolio includes several other biotech industry tenants such as Accuray Inc. and Thermo Fisher Scientific (PPD Inc.).
The development’s name was chosen to represent the momentum of innovation coming out of both the University of Wisconsin–Madison and URP, as well as the speed at which the biohealth segment is evolving in Madison. As recently as last October, President Joe Biden and the U.S. Economic Development Agency designated Wisconsin as a Regional Technology Hub in personalized medicine and biohealth technology — driven in part by a large Madison cluster that includes Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals and Promega Corp.
“We hope that projects like Velocity Station can help cement Madison as a strong market for biotech,” says Dan Schwartz, vice president of SARA Investment Real Estate. “Attention is mostly on the coastal markets, but there is tremendous organic growth within the industry here in Madison, in addition to the companies deciding to relocate here. Velocity Station will provide physical space for this industry to continue to grow.”
CONTACT:
Zach Slagle, CCIM
Director of Development
608-620-8312
