Image courtesy of Newmark

A speculative Burlington development that shifted from office to lab-ready space in 2019 was sold to MetLife Investment Management for $103 million after three life science companies leased the entire building early this year.

MetLife acquired the 109,085-square-foot Burlington BioCenter at 4 Burlington Woods Drive, at a price that equates to $944 per square foot.

Gutierrez Cos. of Burlington broke ground in 2014 on the speculative office development. 

In 2019, Gutierrez formed a joint venture with GEM Realty Capital of Chicago to install lab infrastructure with a strategy of attracting suburban life science growth.

By early 2022, developers secured leases with Cambridge-based life science companies, Ultivue and ProtaGene, and CANbridge, a Chinese biopharmaceutical firm with offices in Kendall Square.

Newmark’s capital markets group represented the sellers and procured the buyer, and sourced financing for the buyer.

Burlington’s lab market has expanded rapidly in recent years through new developments and office conversions. The town is gaining a high-profile tenant in the Cambridge-based Broad Institute, which signed a deal this spring to occupy 145,705 square feet at 25-27 Network Drive for a genetic sequencing research center.

Burlington also attracted the largest suburban Boston life science lease of the third quarter, according to Newmark research, when Lexington-based diabetes researchers Fractyl Laboratories leased 78,000 square feet at 3 Van De Graaff Drive. Jumbo Capital and Apollo Global Management are converting the Van De Graaff Drive office building into lab space.