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Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Gateway Park can’t contain itself any longer.
The commercial and academic technology and life sciences center needs to put up a new building within the next two years, or it stands to lose existing tenants that are growing — not to mention nearly 20 potential new tenants looking for space in the heart of Massachusetts. But the tech-laden park is looking for a non-tech savior.
The center’s planned second and third buildings, adding up to 200,000 square feet intended for mixed uses, are permitted and pad-ready. At least two developers are interested in putting shovels in the ground. But neither of the projects can get financing without securing a 15-year lease from a creditworthy anchor tenant that will occupy at least 30,000 square feet.
“It used to be, you needed to have 50 percent of the building leased (to finance construction) — until September,” said Gateway vice president for business development D’Anne Hurd.
Now creditors are asking for 70 percent to 80 percent of the building to be committed before giving a green light to any project, she said.
Roberta Brien, senior project manager with the Worcester Business Development Corp., which co-owns Gateway Park’s land with WPI, said, “It’s just such an expensive thing to start a building, especially one that has lab space and science space in it.” So Gateway is now seeking an anchor tenant that is not in the science or technology space.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for the Gateway’s second-largest current tenant. Blue Sky Biotech Inc. took space in the park’s biotech incubator when Gateway’s first building opened in April 2007. Since its founding in 2003, the startup has gone from two to 28 employees and now occupies 7,500 square feet, divided between the basement and the third floor.
Gateway Park has shuffled space in order to accommodate the growing company, but soon Blue Sky will need to be somewhere much bigger, said founder and CEO Paul Wengender.
“We could probably go a year in some confined quarters, but by December 2010 our goal is to have a new spot,” Wengender said.
Ideally, he added, that space would be in Gateway Park’s new building. If the new building doesn’t exist, Blue Sky will look elsewhere in the Worcester area.
The contract biotech research company is growing 30 percent to 60 percent a year, he said. If its trajectory persists, Blue Sky would need 15,000 square feet — double its current space — by 2010. By 2014, it could need 30,000 square feet.
Gateway Park has 18 small tenants lined up and is talking with two potential anchor tenants for its new buildings, Hurd said. She declined to name the two potential tenants but said the talks have recently become tougher. The poor economy has eroded Gateway’s edge in cost per square foot, she said.
“Both of these enterprises are sufficiently large that they have space now,” she said. “The talks have become more difficult because staying where they are has become a more attractive option.”
Along with the WBDC, quasi-public state agency MassDevelopment contributed financing to Gateway’s first building, the WPI Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center, which opened in April 2007.
MassDevelopment also helped pay for the brownfield remediation on the park’s entire 11-acre site.
Right now, however, “it’s too early to say what the agency’s role can or will be in relation to WPI’s new building,” said agency spokesman Adam Bickelman in an e-mailed statement.
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