Colliers Facilitates Sale of Boston-Area Biomanufacturing Facility For Record Price

Harrison Street Real Estate has paid $92 million for a 74,000-square-foot Watertown, MA, property in a sale-leaseback deal. According to Colliers, the $1,250-per-square-foot sales price is a record for a Good Manufacturing Practices facility.

Colliers EVP Curtis Cole, managing directors Frank Petz and Matt Sherry, EVP Jeanne Pinado, senior advisor John Nasca and financial analyst Brooke Howard participated in the transaction.

Harrison Street purchased the facility on Pleasant Street from Arranta Bio and leased it back to the contract development and manufacturing organization for 15 years. Arranta completed a build-out of the Watertown facility in 2020 and is seeking to start production of mRNA vaccines.

The facility is one of the largest biomanufacturing sites in the region’s urban core, larger than Alexandria Real Estate Equities’ 40,000-square-foot Watertown project but smaller than the 310,000-square-foot former Sanofi biomanufacturing plant acquired by CDMO Resilience earlier this year, according to published reports.