LOS ANGELES & DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A joint venture between Los Angeles-based HATCHspaces®, Denver-based healthcare developer NexCore Group, and Nuveen Real Estate has acquired a 56,300 square foot industrial facility in the Playa Vista area of West Los Angeles. The project will be redeveloped as a cGMP biomanufacturing facility and serve as the headquarters to Armata Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: ARMP). The building, located at 5005 McConnell, will serve as a critical manufacturing facility for treatments for antibiotic-resistant and difficult to treat bacterial infections.
“The life sciences industry in Greater LA is past the point of being an emerging market, and has quickly created a need for modern biomanufacturing facilities,” says HATCHspaces Co-Founder Allan Glass. “We have seen significant manufacturing projects being built by growing biotech firms, and respected CDMOs acquiring operational capacity in existing facilities.” Glass continues, “Significant companies in the industry have invested in Southern California. They have trained a skilled workforce and are now investing in the core infrastructure to continue growing the industry.”
The McConnell deal represents the fifth asset in the HATCH/NexCore venture, adding manufacturing capabilities alongside turnkey and build-to-suit lab facilities. HATCHspaces now controls over 500,000 sf of dedicated life sciences space with tenants ranging from promising privately-financed startups to publicly-traded companies.
NexCore Chief Development Officer and Managing Partner Todd Varney says, “Los Angeles continues to be a core market for us and our capital partners.” According to industry trade group Biocom, twenty percent of all California life sciences jobs are in the Los Angeles County region, more than any other area in the state. Varney adds, “Innovation within the life sciences has always been present in the Southern California region. The industry understands that. Now everyone else is finding out and we are intently focused on delivering the right spaces to support continued growth.”
Local universities and community colleges have invested heavily into programs that train critical workers for jobs in pharmaceutical and Biotech manufacturing. The region has also historically been home to significant manufacturing from companies like Amgen, Grifols Pharmaceuticals, Takeda, and Edwards Lifesciences. Areas like the South Bay have also seen generations of technical workers learn at Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Tesla, and Space X.
Senior Director Derreck Barker at Nuveen added, “We are eager to continue investing in communities and industries that foster economic growth. The life sciences industry is a job creator and Los Angeles has more of those jobs than anywhere else in the state.”
5005 McConnell is located along a bike trail linking two emerging subclusters of activity in Playa Vista and Culver City. The trail connects some of the most well-capitalized and highly-valued entertainment and technology companies in the country, including Google, HBO, Apple, Sony Studios, and Amazon; and a few of the most well-respected science companies in the region like Science 37, Appia Bio, industry advocacy group Bioscience LA, and now Armata Pharmaceuticals.
“Throughout our portfolio, we connect our buildings and our tenants to one another as a community,” adds HATCHspaces Co-Founder Howard Kozloff. “Some of the most creative people in the world come to study at local universities, and innovative companies have realized that and built a presence in LA to keep those creative people here. Our goal is to help companies do that in our buildings.”
HATCHspaces® LLC is a Los Angeles-based real estate development platform focused on simplifying the process of scientific innovation by creating purpose-built life sciences facilities for companies emerging from academic and incubator networks. With properties in various regional submarkets, HATCHspaces’® mission is to deliver the life science community state-of-the-art lab facilities at varying scales, allowing regions to retain early-stage bioscience and biotechnology start-ups emerging from research environments.
NexCore Group LLC is a national healthcare real estate investment and development company that focuses on acquiring, developing, owning, and managing healthcare facilities including medical office buildings, wellness facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, single and multi-specialty physician buildings, life sciences facilities, seniors housing communities and transitional rehabilitation centers. NexCore partners with top healthcare systems, hospitals, physician groups, and assisted living, memory care, and post-acute care operators, and reputable institutional and high net worth investors to develop, acquire and own high quality assets that serve their communities through significant job creation and the provision of quality healthcare services. Since 2004, the NexCore team has completed $4.7 billion in healthcare real estate transactions throughout 29 states, developed and acquired over 14.3 million square feet of healthcare properties across the country and currently manages over $2.9 billion of healthcare facilities spanning 7.3 million square feet. The company has been recognized repeatedly as one of the Top Healthcare Real Estate Developers in the U.S. by Modern Healthcare and HREI. NexCore is headquartered in Denver, with regional offices in Chicago; Bethesda, Md.; Portland, Ore.; Dallas; Orlando, Fla.; Laguna Niguel, Calif.; and Indianapolis.
