Joel Marcus and John Cunningham

As an early investor in Moderna and a landlord that counts the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company among its tenants — along with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson — urban office real estate investment trust (REIT) Alexandria Real Estate Equities spent a profitable pandemic year on the cutting-edge of saving lives.

“We have close to $2 billion of investments in companies, Moderna being one of them,” John Cunningham said.

Alexandria had revenues of $1.89 billion in 2020, a more than 23 percent increase over 2019. The company’s total asset base grew 27 percent to 49.7 million square feet, and its operating portfolio grew 18 percent to 31.8 million square feet. Alexandria also collected 99.8 percent of its rents from April 1, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2020, and 99.6 percent in January of this year.

“We were able to get a central construction designation for a number of our projects, including for the development of a 60,000-square-foot laboratory science facility in Long Island City, which is the only space in New York City right now where companies can move immediately into lab space and keep their development going,” Cunningham said. “We also introduced groups like Pfizer to NYU, where they’re doing research and creating opportunities for people to potentially work together to help solve the pandemic crisis.”

Alexandria has two campuses of its Alexandria Center for Life Science in New York City. Its flagship, at 430 and 450 East 29th Street, is 730,000 square feet, and is currently at 99 percent capacity. The company is currently talking with the city about breaking ground on a new 550,000-square-foot tower at that location. And, in Long Island City, Alexandria has 189,000 square feet at 30-02 48th Avenue.

The REIT has also been busy outside of New York, including with the $1.48 billion acquisition earlier this year of 1.8 million square feet in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood for another biotech project.

For the rest of the year, Cunningham said Alexandria is focused on similar deals and developments as the company continues to build its life sciences empire.

“We’ve leased over 100,000 square feet in the last year and had about 22 transactions,” Cunningham said. “I like to say we’re building the life science ecosystem 5,000 feet at a time, because that’s what New York’s all about. It’s very much an early-stage market.”—L.G.