The New Jersey Center of Excellence in Bridgewater — Courtesy: Advance Realty
By Joshua Burd
A pharmaceutical firm has more than tripled its footprint at a sprawling life sciences campus in Bridgewater, where it has signed a new lease for 18,072 square feet.
The tenant, Solaris Pharma Corp., will now occupy an entire floor at the campus known as the New Jersey Center of Excellence, according to owners Advance Realty and CrossHarbor Capital Partners LLC. The new lease represents an increase of more than 13,000 square feet for the company, which is engaged in the development of topical and transdermal pharmaceutical products.
Advance was represented in lease negotiations by Director of Asset Management Barry Quiner and the JLL team of Daniel Loughlin, Robert Ryan, Craig Eisenhardt and Scott Stange.
“With modern R&D infrastructure that is second to none, and a location at the center of the Boston-to-D.C. corridor, the New Jersey Center of Excellence has proven to be the perfect fit for our company since we initially moved into the campus in 2015,” said Lakshmi Raghavan, founder and president of Solaris Pharma Corp. “Our products have a relatively high barrier to entry due to manufacturing complexities and high-end clinical patient study demands, and our expanded space at NJCOE will enable us to create efficiencies that will help us thrive.”
Solaris is among a host of life sciences tenants at the 110-acre campus on Route 202/206, a former Sanofi U.S. research complex. Since acquiring the property in 2013, Advance and CrossHarbor have pushed to repopulate some 800,000 square feet of office and lab space, while pursuing a mixed-use redevelopment plan for other parts of the site.
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The mixed-use portion calls for 400 luxury apartments and urban-style amenities such as restaurants, a grocer, entertainment, shops and outdoor recreation. Construction on the town center portion of the project is set to begin later this year.
Nestlé Health Science will anchor the complex with an 180,000-square-foot research and development space. In recent months, other firms such as Avantor Performance Materials, Vertice Pharma and Matinas BioPharma have signed new leases or expanded at the campus, which is more than 80 percent leased.
“Our goal for the Center of Excellence has always been to provide our tenants with the space and infrastructure needed to grow within the campus, while, at the same time, creating a vibrant workplace where employees look forward to coming to work each day,” said Peter Cocoziello, founder and CEO of Advance Realty. “This latest expansion with Solaris is a testament to the environment that we’re creating at NJCOE, and the tenant commitment that we’re seeing as a result.”