Instil Bio Campus Underway With $85M Construction Loan
The development will be the new manufacturing headquarters for the biopharmaceutical firm developing clinical-stage cell therapies to fight cancer
By Greg Cornfield July 11, 2022 5:10 pm
reprints
The real estate market for life sciences space in Los Angeles seems to be growing exponentially.
Instil Bio, which is focused on developing clinical-stage cell therapies in the fight against cancer, has secured an $85 million construction loan to build a 102,000-square-foot campus with lab, office and manufacturing space. CBRE (CBRE) arranged the five-year, floating-rate, interest-only, nonrecourse loan from Oxford Properties Group on behalf of the borrower.
The Instil Bio Life Sciences Campus will be at 18404-18412 Oxnard Street in the neighborhood of Tarzana in the San Fernando Valley. CBRE said that, with clinical manufacturing operational, the recent financing will support the completion of the commercial manufacturing facility.
“This property will serve as Instil Bio’s global manufacturing headquarters, ultimately employing hundreds of scientists and research professionals at the location,” said CBRE’s Jeff Pion, who facilitated Instil Bio’s acquisition of the property in October 2020 with Andrew Riley.
Nu Suwankosai, Oxford Properties’ head of investments and credit, said the firm is excited to be part of a redevelopment of a new headquarters campus.
“For Oxford, this financing sits squarely at the intersection of two key investment themes of deploying into credit and into the life science sector,” Suwankosai said.
CBRE recently released a national life sciences report identifying the top 25 life sciences labor markets, with L.A.-Orange County in the seventh spot for research talent with the second-most graduates annually in biological and biomedical sciences.
“Los Angeles has continuously ranked among the top 10 life sciences markets given its world-class research institutions and access to skilled labor,” Pion added.
Venture capital funding in life sciences in L.A. also jumped 566 percent in the last five years, compared to the national increase of 345 percent.
“There is an abundance of financing capital in the market for high-quality, purpose-built life sciences projects – and it is exciting to see more properties like this take shape in the Greater Los Angeles area,” said CBRE’s Greg Grant, who arranged the financing for Instil Bio.
Gregory Cornfield can be reached at gcornfield@commercialobserver.com.
