If you’re a biotech firm looking for a lab in St. Louis' central corridor, you’ll have to get in line. The Cortex Innovation District is full. There is at least one opportunity coming soon for that new lab smell. The crunch is a signal of rising demand, which also could awaken past projects from hibernation.
"Today there's not a single available vacant square foot of lab space in Cortex," Sam Fiorello, President and CEO of the district, tells KMOX. The final spot was claimed by Varro Life Sciences, leaving Cortex at full capacity.
This success presents a pressing issue. "As we're looking to continue to grow local companies, lab companies, and recruit companies from other parts of the country and the world, today, we have nowhere to put them," he says.
Help is coming soon. The former MERS Goodwill headquarters on Forest Park Ave., currently being redeveloped by Washington University, will bring more space to the market in the next few months.
We've told you about the building's anchor tenant, C2N Diagnostics, a local success story that started at Wash U. C2N, which developed a groundbreaking blood test to help detect Alzheimer's, is taking up 70,000 square feet in the facility. Fiorello says the company hit an "inflection point" after its technology proved crucial for new FDA-approved drugs.
"[It’s] a homegrown technology," Fiorello says. "Watching them increase their footprint here... and putting something out in the world that will really improve not just St. Louis but everyone in the world" is especially exciting.
The redevelopment will not only house C2N’s expansion but will also offer about 70,000 additional square feet of, for now, unspoken-for lab space.
"What that does is... it really gives us an important piece here," Fiorello notes. "So they can show a potential tenant, 'Here, see this floor here, you can fit this out to your specs and [we can] have you in it in 6 to 9 months.'"
With demand clearly outstripping supply, several major projects that had been on the back burner are now under consideration again.
This includes a long-discussed development at Sarah St. and Clayton Ave. Originally proposed a decade ago by Koman Group as an office complex called "Cortex K," it is now back as a residential-focused project last called "Cortex MX" by Keeley Properties, which merged with Koman in 2019.
Fiorello confirms this. "I’m told by the developers they'll be putting a spade in the ground in the next months to start to build that out," he says.
Earlier in September, a building permit application was filed with the city for a residential multifamily development at this address, 4108 Clayton Ave.
Cortex the district entity itself has also taken steps to foster the creation of more available laboratories by purchasing the former Legal Services of Eastern Missouri headquarters, which is a historic 1907 Firestone factory.
"We're turning that into lab space," Fiorello says.
However, the massive 4210 Duncan project remains on pause. It was dubbed the "Sandcrawler" due to its Star Wars-reminiscent shape (some say it looks like a legless All Terrain Armored Transport or AT-AT).
It would book-end the block of innovation buildings named after their street addresses with the pioneer of modern Cortex, 4240 Duncan. In the middle would be 4220 Duncan, home to the region's Microsoft Technology Center.
"It's a big nut to put up if we have zero pre-leases," Fiorello says of the 300,000-plus-square-foot proposed "Sandcrawler" building on what's been a parking lot. Though he does add discussions about it are ongoing with developer Wexford Science & Technology.
For now, he says the strategy is a balancing act of meeting immediate demand with the Goodwill space while planning for the next wave of growth.
"It's a tricky game." Fiorello says. "It's expensive to carry lab inventory that's sitting idle, so you've got to try to time it" perfectly for when there's demand.
