Image courtesy of Google Maps
After adding a hotel and restaurants to The District office park in Burlington, National Development proposes three life science buildings totaling 665,000 square feet to add momentum to the town’s growing lab market.
Burlington has emerged as a leading Route 128 life science cluster in recent years, after developers upgraded office buildings into lab-ready space such as Gutierrez Cos.’ Burlington BioCenter.
Newton-based National Development bought the former New England Executive Park in 2013, branding it as The District and developing a 170-room hotel and two new restaurants in recent years.
The District’s roughly 1 million square feet of office space is currently 95 percent leased, according to Andrew Gallinaro, a partner at National Development.
But changes in suburban real estate demand have favored life science leasing over office space. The office vacancy rate in Burlington is 17 percent, compared with 10 percent for lab buildings, according to JLL data.
“With regional commercial real estate markets continuing to evolve and shift, it is critically important to the ongoing vitality of projects, such as The District Burlington, to reevaluate their overall master plan program with the future in mind,” National Development wrote in a submission to the Burlington Planning Board.
The proposed amendment to the property’s master plan would increase the previously-approved density by approximately 200,000 square feet.
A previously-approved office building would be replaced with a 190,000-square-foot life science building and parking garage. Two office buildings at 1200 and 1700 District Ave. would be replaced with a pair of life science buildings totaling 465,000 square feet.
The buildings would be built in phases or concurrently depending upon market demand, according to the submission.
Burlington officials are studying potential rezoning of the entire commercial district bordering Route 128, including the Burlington Mall property, to encourage mixed-use development of parcels between Route 3 and Cambridge Street.
The changes could clear the way for 4.4 million square feet of new development including 1,815 housing units, according to a recent land-use study.
