Local officials in Superior, Colorado have approved plans for the 365K SF Coal Creek Innovation Park. This is a joint venture between healthcare developer PMB and Montgomery Street Partners to provide much-needed lab space in Boulder County.

Construction is set to break next summer for a $280 million development that is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2024.

Coal Creek Innovation Park is Boulder County’s first speculative purpose-built life sciences campus and is located on one of the last backfill sites in the county, in the downtown area of ​​Superior near U.S. Route 36. .

Phase 1 of the project will include an owner-provided 27K SF-spec booth space designed for immediate occupancy by growing companies in need of quality lab space. This is followed by his three office and laboratory buildings ranging in size from 85K SF to 150K SF and his fourth building with retail space on the ground floor.

According to the developer, the building features efficient floor slabs, a floor-to-ground height of 16 feet, and a “flexible infrastructure” to accommodate a variety of office, lab, and research and development uses. Shared services include RODI water, custom lab water, compressed air, glass cleaning, and lab waste disposal systems.

In a statement, Ben Rosenfeld, PMB’s senior vice president of development, said there is a significant unmet need for institutional-level life sciences space in Boulder County.

According to Rosenfeld, the majority of existing assets in the region consist of assets under 60K SF converted from flexible single-story properties that cannot be expanded to accommodate high-growth life sciences companies. .

CBRE, which sells the Coal Creek Innovation Park, says more life sciences companies are looking to locate in Denver Metro and Boulder, but the influx of life sciences companies is being hampered by the lack of available lab space in the Boulder area. rice field.

CBRE research showed that Boulder’s life sciences facility had a vacancy rate of 0.3% at the end of the second quarter. Newmark estimates that the Denver/Boulder life sciences market will encompass 3.5 million SFs, with investments to date in 2022 already exceeding last year’s total of $491 million.

Recent life sciences deals in the Boulder area include the acquisition of a 9.3-acre parcel of four buildings by Breakthrough Properties, a joint venture of Tishman Speyer and Pelco Capital. The partners plan to develop a biotech campus with 164K SF of offices, labs and flex space called Boulder 38 By Breakthrough.

In April, Blackstone subsidiary Biomed Realty acquired a $600 million purchase from a partnership of Al Hilal Real Estate, Goldman Sachs and Lionstone Investments, a 1 million SF life sciences campus with 22 buildings in Boulder. Acquired Flatiron Park.

Biomed plans to invest another $200 million to transform the office space into a new lab on site.