^{(Empty shell space in 74M, which was completed in 2024 (Fierce Biotech))}

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By Philip Borden | CEO of Labshares

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Yet another article dropped this week on Boston's staggering lab vacancies, this time from Fierce Biotech. It's a look at the extraordinary overbuilding that happened during the biotech boom of 2019-2023, and the brutal consequences for today's life science real estate industry.

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But I think it misses at least half the story.

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Nearly all the discussion about Boston's lab vacancies focuses on the supply side: how much space we built, why we overbuilt, and when the market will recover.

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What about demand?

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The economics of drug discovery are changing dramatically. Outsourcing, AI and automation, China's rise as a global biotech powerhouse, and increasing capital discipline are reshaping how companies conduct R&D, and how much physical infrastructure they actually need.

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Yet the life science real estate industry continues to assume that when biotech recovers, demand for traditional laboratory space will recover right alongside it.

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I think that's an enormous mistake. Biotech could experience another extraordinary boom without a corresponding recovery in demand for traditional lab space.

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We're already seeing this at Labshares. Emerging biotechs aren't abandoning laboratory research. They're looking for smaller, more flexible, and more capital-efficient ways to conduct it. Our first phase at 66 Galen Street in Watertown reached full occupancy in four months, even as traditional lab space across Boston sat empty.

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I wrote about some of these changes recently for MassBio in Biotech's Cathedral Problem.

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The biotech industry is changing. The real estate industry needs to stop planning for the last boom and build what today's biotechs actually need.

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