:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65807310/Screen_Shot_2019_12_02_at_7.17.18_AM.0.png)
The 290,000-square-foot life sciences building at 101 South Street in Somerville’s Boynton Yards footprint has been under construction for months, but the development team behind it is hosting an official groundbreaking on December 2.
Developers DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners and Leggat McCall announced the groundbreaking just before Thanksgiving. It’s the latest life sciences project to advance in the Boston region.
The developers have billed 101 South as “the largest state-of-the-art lab development in Somerville’s growing life science market.” They’ve also touted its proximity to Somerville’s Union Square as well as Cambridge’s Inman and Kendall squares, the latter one the top biotech-tech hub in the region.
The South Street life sciences building is also going to be near the future Union Square stop on the extended Green Line (and it will have four levels of underground parking). Leggat McCall and DLJ, too, are building it on spec, meaning they don’t have a tenant or tenants lined up—though, given the growing presence of biotech firms in the Boston area, filling the building shouldn’t be that herculean a task.
And 101 South will be part of the nearly 3.5-acre, more than 1 million-square-foot Boynton Yards project, which is sure to include other commercial space as well as performing arts space and approximately 425 residences. The ongoing project will fill in what’s now parking lots, scrapyards, and industrial properties.
The 101 South piece is the latest life sciences building planned or underway in the Boston region. More are slated for, among other places, Waltham, elsewhere in Somerville, and near the Broadway T stop in South Boston. The additions come as biotech and tech in general come to occupy more and more commercial space in Greater Boston—and to drive more of its housing market.
The Boynton Yards building is expected to be finished and ready for move-ins by summer 2021—conveniently enough, around the same time that that Union Square Green Line station comes online. Stay tuned.