Three years ago, in the depths of the pandemic, only around 1 percent of existing lab space in the region was vacant or available via sublease. Today, commercial real estate brokerage Colliers reported last week, that number is 21.5 percent, and vacancies are expected to grow in the coming months as more buildings open. For comparison, the availability ratefor office space in Greater Boston is 22.7 percent.
There are fundamental differences between the lab and office markets — notably the fact that most lab work, unlike office work,needs to be done in person. But the sharp rise in lab vacancies is a stark reminder of how quickly fortunes can change for a hot industry, even a still thriving one like Boston’s biotechs.
The amount of Greater Boston lab space that is occupied by tenants has climbed by more than one-fifth over the last two years. But this wave of new construction and office-to-lab conversions means the amount of vacant space has climbed even faster, hitting an all-time high of 11 million square feet.And for lab landlords, the scene will likely get worse before it gets better.
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“We haven’t seen vacancies peak yet,”said Colliers research director Jeffrey Myers. “Once they start to turn the corner, it could take years … to get back to something we would consider more of a normal market.”
Several factors are driving the sudden shift.
Back when lab space was impossible to find, pent-up demand prompted many developers to bet on life sciences projects“on spec,” or without commitments from tenants. At the time, many local biotechs often took whatever lease they could find, sometimes renting considerably more than they needed. Meanwhile, money poured into the region’s biotech scene from venture capitalists hoping for a big payout, through an initial public offering, or from a sale to a much larger drug company, fueling demand for real estate. As a result, lab projects sprouted all over the region.
Now, many of those shiny new buildings are hitting the market — the amount of lab space in the northwestern suburbs along Route 128, for example, essentially doubled in the past five years. The small firms that took on more space than they needed are now looking to sublease some of it. The IPO machine has slowed considerably, as has the flow of cash from VC firms. And several significant players, including Takeda and Ginkgo Bioworks, have announced layoffs in recent months.
“It’s a correction from the sugar high we had during COVID when everybody was piling money into anything that said ‘life sciences,’” said Bob Coughlin, an executive at real estate brokerage JLL’s Boston office who specializes in lab deals.
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A former Tufts Health Plan building on Mount Auburn Street in Watertown has been converted to lab space, but leasing on these new projects has been slower than expected.Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
The slowdown is evident all over Greater Boston. Myers rattled off a few examples topping 400,000 square feet in size, from the former John Hancock headquarters at 601 Congress St. in the Seaport that was renovated into labs but remains empty, to the former Tufts Health Plan headquarters in Watertown, also converted and empty. A similarly sized building just went up across from the Leader Bank Pavilion in the Seaport — also vacant. Lab plans have been shelved for a former auto dealership site in Needham and at the Riverside train terminal in Newton, while construction was evenhalted midstream on a lab building going up along McGrath Highway in Somerville.
Factor in the buildings that are under construction, and the region’s lab availability rate approaches 32 percent, according to JLL.In total, nearly 5 million square feet of labs opened in just the first six months of 2024 across Greater Boston, per JLL’s research, with only one-fifth of that newly built space already leased.
Empty floors even abound in the industry epicenter of Kendall Square. There was less speculative building in Kendall — most new buildings there are preleased to big tenants such as AstraZeneca, the Broad Institute, and Takeda. But Colliers notes a record amount of lab space is on the market now in Cambridge: 3.6 million square feet, most of it in or near Kendall.
Beth O’Neill Maloney, head of the Kendall Square Association, doesn’t sound worried. Kendall is as vibrant as it’s ever been, she said, and the empty space could allow more startups to expand there.
“It’s the normal ebb and flow as we build and fill, I’m pretty confident about that,” Maloney said. “Zero percent vacancy rate probably isn’t the healthiest for us. … The availability of some sublease space actually helps some early-stage companies grow here, thrive, and take root.”
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Advocates for the industry say the empty space underscores the need for the Legislature to pass an economic development bill that would allocate roughly $100 million a year for life sciences, essentially reauthorizing two previous rounds of state assistance. The House and Senate could not reach an agreement on the bill before regularly scheduled formal sessions ended for the year on Aug. 1. The Massachusetts Biotechnology Council sent a letter last week to legislative leaders, urging them to bring lawmakers back for a special formal session to pass the bill as soon as possible, as Governor Maura Healey has requested.
“My hope would be there’s a sense of urgency,” said Ben Bradford, a vice president at MassBio. “This is a great tool for the state to recruit companies or to keep companies here.”
Still, the sharp surge in vacancies has provided welcome relief to all the smaller biotechs that had been jockeying for space. Coughlin, the JLL executiveand former head of MassBio, has been working through a planned vacation this week to keep up.
“I’m doing predominantly tenant work, and I’m as busy as I can be,” Coughlin said. “I don’t like being this busy in August, but I am.”
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The new Lilly Seaport Innovation Center, a 12-story, 346,000-square-foot building along Fort Point Channel, opened this week, a bright spot in the current market for life sciences real estate in that the building opened fully occupied.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.
BOSTON (WHDH) – Celtics star forward Jayson Tatum responded to the team’s shocking trade of forward Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday, reflecting on the near decade they spent together in Boston.
Tatum posted a tribute to Brown on his Instagram story Friday afternoon, writing, “9 years! Forever grateful for all that we accomplished together, for pushing me to be a better player. From first round exits to winning a chip together I’m thankful for it all. Nothing but love and respect for you as a player and as a person! Looking forward to see how you attack this next chapter of your career and wish you nothing but the best for you! Continue to be special.”
The trade will become official Monday once the league-wide moratorium is lifted. The Celtics will welcome nine-time NBA All-Star Paul George, who they received from the 76ers, as well as new signings Mitchell Robinson and Mike Conley Jr.
(Copyright (c) 2026 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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Amid several reports that said Brown didn’t request a trade and that Boston actually thought Derrick White was the best player on the 2025-26 roster, an already motivated Brown now has an even larger chip on his shoulder after the Celtics dealt him away.
“The message was received,” Brown said. “I wasn’t thrilled with the amount of respect that was shown throughout this process. I think there was a bit of a lack of respect. I think it was fine at one point, then out of nowhere, things just went left. I think Brad [Stevens] is getting a lot of the criticism. I wasn’t thrilled with the way he facilitated some of the conversations.”
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After the Celtics fell short in their pursuit of Giannis Antetokounmpo — Brown was the centerpiece of Boston’s trade package — Stevens was noncommittal when asked about Brown’s future in Boston.
“Jaylen Brown is a big part of us,” Stevens said. “I’m never going to predict the future, but every indication, everything that I think about over the past few years has been building around those guys, right? So obviously, you never know. But at the same time, the one thing I want to make very clear is how valued he’s always been.”
“He’s been amazing. He’s been an amazing teammate, a great person to be around. And whether that run ends 10 years from now when he retires, or before, there’s a lot to celebrate. We have a great relationship, an open relationship where we talk about everything. But I don’t want to predict the future. I look at it as, this is our team.”
Stevens traded Brown to the 76ers on Wednesday in exchange for Paul George, two first-round picks, and two second-round picks. The deal was widely criticized.
For Brown, the most puzzling aspect was the lack of an explanation.
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“I definitely think there’s more to it,” Brown said. “I just wish that more to it could’ve been explained to me. Because I think if more to it was explained, I would’ve understood. I thought I earned the respect to get that explanation. But hey, obviously, I was wrong. That’s life. You move on.”
Brown will now join a 76ers team that, with Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid, and V. J. Edgecombe already in place, could be poised to leapfrog Boston in the Eastern Conference.
“I don’t want [any] special treatment, I don’t need no handouts … I plan on earning my respect one day at a time by putting in the work,” Brown said of playing for Philadelphia. “I’m looking forward to getting in the gym, the whole process.”
“The hard part is, the last 10 years, I’ve been programmed to hate Philadelphia. The history of the rivalry, the playoff battles … I’ve been programmed to think like, ‘[Expletive] The Process’. It’s funny, now I’ve got to reverse-engineer it. But I’ll be ready to go by the time the season starts.”
Conor Ryan can be reached at conor.ryan@globe.com.
A broken elevator has left some residents of a Boston apartment building unable to leave, but a new stairlift has brought temporary relief.
When 80-year-old Silke Evans, who lives at the Villa Michelangelo Apartments in the North End, spoke with NBC10 Boston last Wednesday, she had been stuck inside for weeks.
“I feel imprisoned. That’s it,” she said at the time. “I feel like I’m in prison.”
Silke Evans, an 80-year-old woman living at the Villa Michelangelo Apartments in the North End, has been unable to use the elevator at her building for three weeks.
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“She was stuck up on the third floor for a total of three-and-a-half weeks,” her daughter, Katharine Clark, said Thursday.
Thursday, Metro Management, which runs the building, installed the stairlift as a temporary solution while waiting for elevator repairs.
It allowed Evans to leave for the first time in nearly a month.
“They had food, and got to eat out, and just feel like a normal person,” Clark said. “She’s been looking kind of sad for weeks, so it’s the first time I saw some pictures where she was genuinely smiling.”
The fix brought major joy to Evans, with hopes of a long-term solution in the future.
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“We’re not out of the woods. We still have a broken elevator. Hopefully, it’s not too many months with just a chairlift,” Clark said.
Jeff Buono, director of property management, told NBC10 Boston last week that the process to repair the elevator has been difficult.
“They’re estimating four to five weeks to get the parts and then four to five weeks for the install,” Buono said in a phone interview. “It’s tough to get parts in general. It takes longer to get them than it ever has before. So the systems now just need to be modernized. I mean, it does take a toll on our elderly population — it really does. And we do feel for them. They’re likely family to us.”
NBC10 Boston reached out to the management company for further comment Thursday, but staff had already left for the holiday weekend.
