Real Estate

Texas Is ‘Going Big’ In Biopharma

Texas wants to get the word out: It’s not just for oil and pipelines anymore.

The Lone Star State is a rapidly emerging biopharma hub, with more than just a lone focus on oncology. Houston and Austin are home to some of the top up-and-coming biopharma companies, and real estate powerhouses like Hines are anchoring major new developments with them.

Ridgeline Therapeutics is one such company, established in 2012 and spun out of technology invented by founder and CEO Stan Watowich at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Ridgeline develops small molecule inhibitors of nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT) to reverse Type 2 diabetes, obesity, muscular dystrophies and sarcopenia (age-related muscle degeneration).

During the past year, the company has begun to ramp up, hiring, applying for funding, developing the program and advancing projects closer to IND filing and clinical trials. How has their residence within JLABS@TMC, part of the Johnson & Johnson Innovation-JLABS incubator ecosystem, helped during this year of rapid acceleration?

“Working in Houston, for a biotech company, I think is great,” Watowich said. “The ecosystem, it’s not small, but it’s not out of control, so you can actually get to know many of the other companies, the other CEOs, see what they’re up to, share ideas, thoughts…the even bigger thing is you have access to all of these academic labs.”

Texas, and Houston in particular, has certainly caught the attention of the real estate development market. Audrey Symes, Director of Research, Healthcare, Life Sciences and Advisory at JLL, an American commercial real estate services company, explains why the city is at the top of their up-and-coming markets list.

“There are a couple markets that are right at the gate, ready to go, but I would say that the number one that is really emergent right now is Houston,” Symes said. “Houston has an amazing network of both medical practitioners and incubators, universities such as Baylor [The Baylor College of Medicine], the Texas Medical Center, and MD Anderson I think is the premier cancer research hospital in the US if not the world. So Houston has been really at the precipice of rising into the next rank for quite some time.”

Academic institutions rounding out the illustrious network include Rice University, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston,  Texas A&M University, and The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

“You have a lot of idea flow coming out of this, and a lot of people thinking about starting companies,” Watowich explained.

With the commanding presence of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the largest cancer center in the U.S., and one of the most preeminent in the world, the assumption would be that oncology is the state’s number one focus. According to Watowich, it is only at the center of a wide range of therapeutic passions:

“I would say oncology is definitely a strength in the medical center,” said Watowich. “Because you have MD Anderson, you have the Baylor college of medicine, you have some of the hospitals with their specialized care. But I would say neurological diseases are a strength, metabolic diseases are a strength, muscular diseases are a strength…it’s hard to say where there’s not a strength.”

Hines is a privately owned global real estate investment, development, and management firm traditionally known for its office spaces. The company has been diversifying significantly during the past decade, and two of their key focus areas – life sciences and senior living– mirror two of society’s biggest current priorities: healthcare and the rapidly aging population.

In July, Hines finalized a deal with 2ML Real Estate Interests to build a mixed-use life sciences and technology-based development called Levit Greennext to the Texas Medical Center. The company plans to break ground on the phase I building in the third quarter of 2021 and complete construction in late 2022.

“It’s not often that an organization can have the opportunity to develop 50 plus acres adjacent to the largest medical center on the planet. That opportunity came along, and we thought it was absolutely intuitive that you could marry up that type of opportunity next to something like the Texas Medical Center,” said John Mooz, a senior managing director, and market head of Houston/Austin/San Antonio at Hines.

For industry and real estate developers alike, the cost of building, and cost of living can often make the difference when deciding where to locate.

“In our trying to understand what the best end-users are for Levit Green, I do think they will be both organically from here, but also locating from either coast where among other things, it’s expensive to build relative to Houston,” Mooz said. “You have gross rates that top $100 psf, and Houston can be almost half of that. And when you’re looking at a company with early-stage funding, that can be a huge difference. So I would argue that Houston can attract top talent and top organizations with an incredibly affordable quality of life, and strong diverse, cultural offerings. With the global oncology pharmaceutical market projected to be worth approximately $200 billion by 2023, Houston is primed to move to the top of any emerging life sciences cluster list. That’s a pretty strong trajectory in a place that spends a lot of time studying cancer. You combine it next to a medical center that has over 9,200 beds, and we have, by anyone’s count, somewhere in the order of 1100-1200 clinical trials going on right now.”

For all of its merits, Texas is still growing into the biopharma mentality when it comes to capital investment.

“Where Texas really falls behind is capital,” Watowich said. “It’s not that they don’t have money…most of the money is from pipeline and it’s hard to get them to understand that investing in biotech per se isn’t really that different from doing a very deep offshore oil well. The risks are comparable, the timeline’s comparable, and the money’s comparable.”

Watowich is working with other Houston and Texas leaders to launch the Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics. This Accelerator will assist entrepreneurs aiming to turn their research discoveries into clinical-stage biotech companies supported by forward-thinking investors and non-dilutive funding.

“People need to be willing and accepting of taking risks. And culturally, that doesn’t happen everywhere,” said Travis McCready, Executive Director, U.S. Life Sciences Markets at JLL. “The three mega markets that exemplify this are greater Boston, the Bay area, and San Diego. They (Houston) have a really glowing and exciting creative scene, and I like the creative economy as a measure and metric of risk.”

“The other key for Texas is an injection of privately-led development dedicated to the life sciences market, Mooz said. “Texas Medical Center, I believe is the eighth largest business district in the United States, and the work and the development that’s gone on there is astounding. It’s mostly by in-place organizations and not privately-led development, and that’s what’s been missing. I think what we really need is purpose-built facilities to accommodate all of that R&D, and that’s what we’re trying to answer.”

 

Source: BioSpace

 

Cambridge-Based BioLabs Selects Dallas Site For Central U.S. Hub

Dallas-Fort Worth‘s 23-acre Pegasus Park office campus is the future landing site for life sciences firm BioLabs’ central U.S. hub.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based BioLabs plans to open BioLabs at Pegasus Park inside the under-development Pegasus Park campus. The future tenant also plans to occupy private lab and office space at the site.

The redeveloped Pegasus Park near Stemmons Freeway in Dallas (PHOTO CREDIT: Small Investments, Lydia Hill Philanthropies and GFF)

Pegasus Park is the brainchild of J. Small Investments and Lyda Hill Philanthropies, which partnered to transform a former ExxonMobil office campus into a mixed-use development with specialty hubs and office sites dedicated to life sciences, biotech and philanthropic tenants.

To date, CoStar Group has identified 188 sites in DFW dedicated to life sciences tenants, with over 15,000 employees.

“The largest tenant so far is Alcon Laboratories, which occupies 1.6M SF at 6201 South Freeway in Fort Worth. Other DFW life and medical sciences tenants include Stryker, Abbott Labs and Pfizer,” CoStar Group Director of Market Analytics Paul Hendershot said. “With a rich history of technology and innovation, Dallas-Fort Worth is in a strong position to grow its already robust life sciences industry cluster.”

Still under development, the new life sciences campus sits off Stemmons Freeway between Southwestern Medical District and the Dallas Design District. J. Small Investments acquired the campus in 2015 from ExxonMobil and intends to convert the site into a mixed-use development offering 550K SF of office space, with a biotech hub featuring 37K SF of lab and training space.

“BioLabs is one of the biggest names in the biotech startup industry. Their decision to choose Dallas as their first location in the central U.S. is significant for our city, region and state,” CEO of LH Capital Inc. and Lyda Hill Philanthropies Nicole Small said in a statement.

 

Source: Bisnow

Medical Real Estate Still The Best Way To Keep Your Portfolio Healthy

In 2018, the JSE’s SA listed property index dropped 25%. In 2019, the total return from the index was 1.92%, well below inflation. In the first five months of 2020, the index shed 39%.

Although dividends from listed property grew by 8-12% a year between 2014 and 2017, growth slowed to 3.5% in 2019, which again was below inflation. In response to the economic fall-out from Covid-19, many property companies have warned they will withhold dividends this year to strengthen their balance sheets and until they understand the full fallout from the pandemic.

The data is not looking encouraging.  Office tenants are cutting space wherever possible, having learned that their reduced workforce can work from home. Retail is under enormous pressure across the board, from the legendary brands like Edgars to the smaller independent brands, and restaurants that just don’t have the fire power to recapitalise and pay rents in a market where there are still restrictions and the consumer is unable to come to the rescue.

What’s more, if you are in the hotel and hospitality industry, then there is really no clear path to recovery at this stage and the losses will be devastating.

There’s no refuge in residential property, either. The Lightstone Residential Property Index shows national house price growth in SA peaked at 6.25% in 2014 and has slowed since then to a five-year low of 1.7% in 2019. Lightstone expects, despite the recent interest rate cuts, that growth in the residential housing market will slow again in 2020.

Two specialized sectors of the property market have continued to deliver solid returns throughout the Covid-19 crisis. Logistics is one of the winners due to online e-commerce stores which have enjoyed a surge in online shopping.

The other big winner globally is medical office buildings, whose tenants mostly offer essential services. Even those who had been required to close are already benefiting from a post-lockdown surge in patient visits as medical procedures can, in most cases, not be postponed indefinitely. Think for a moment about your dentist, who will still need to attend to those fillings even if he could not see you over the last three months.

For South Africans who invested in offshore logistics or medical buildings, the rand returns have been considerably enhanced by the latest depreciation of the rand against the dollar.

In the US, the Covid-19 crisis has hit particularly hard, with 134,000 deaths by early July, amid total confirmed cases exceeding three million. Hospitals under pressure to clear wards and scale up for the anticipated flood of Covid-19 patients have had to postpone all elective procedures and turn patients away who were not critical.

This dramatically affected the income of all medical professionals who are not directly involved in treating Covid-19 patients, and has also affected hospitals’ revenue. Even as the US emerges from lockdown, patients choose to avoid traditional hospitals in fear of being exposed to the virus. This has been a boost for medical practitioners working outside the hospital systems, as patients have sought treatment from doctors working from these independent facilities.

Orbvest, which has 19 medical office buildings under management in three US states (Texas, Georgia and New Jersey), noted rental collections declined slightly in April, during lockdown, as about 21 tenants across the entire portfolio of over 100,000 square meters requested deferment.

But by end-June, the net collection of rentals was back to 97.6%, as both Texas and Georgia re-opened their economies, and collections for the month of July already are close to normal. The nett result of the pandemic on our projected revenue will be negligible and we expect to have fully recovered before year end.

Medical property investment was not an unexpected beneficiary of the Covid-19 crisis. The argument for buying into a building tenanted by medical professionals, especially in the US, makes fundamental sense in the long term. In the US, the aging population is growing and requiring more medical care. An investment delivering a proven 8% p.a. in US dollar dividends paid quarterly, plus a capital gain share at the end of the investment period, is an essential part of a diversified portfolio for South African investors.

 

Source: Daily Maverick