Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Mass. Life Sciences Center moves its home to Waltham

By Marc Songini

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) announced plans to move to a permanent home in the Bay Colony Corporate Center, an office campus located along Route 128 in Waltham. The address is 1000 Winter Street, and the MLSC will be located in a four-story building in the campus’ center. This is expected to put the MLSC in a location where it will be easily accessible to companies, investors, researchers and others with an interest in the state’s life sciences industry. The group will, however, also maintain a “small workspace” in Boston.

The MLSC is the quasi-public state agency that oversees doling out the funds provided by the state’s Life Sciences Act legislation. The Life Sciences Act offers some $1 billion in incentives, tax breaks, and investment funds to support the state’s biotechnology industry. Since its inception, the MLSC has been using temporary office space provided by other state agencies until it located its own headquarters.

There are plenty of biotech companies to keep the MLSC company in the western suburbs of Boston already. In fact, Cambridge-based biotechnology giant Biogen Idec Inc. recently confirmed plans to move its headquarters to the suburb of Weston in 2010.

The landlord of Bay Colony Corporate Center is New York-based Broadway Real Estate Partners LLC.  The privately held Broadway Partners recently spent $1 million to renovate the property with landscaping and signage improvements and lobby restoration. Since 2000, Broadway Partners has bought office properties worth more than $15 billion.