Article
‘The Core’ Life Sciences Campus Is The First of Its Kind in Ontario
September 8, 2022 4 Minute Read
First Gulf has partnered with Spear Street Capital to launch The Core, a state of the art life sciences campus within Sheridan Research Park at 2395 Speakman Drive in Mississauga.
It’s a first of its kind development for the Greater Toronto Area and the province as a whole. With the potential for up to 1.2 million sq. ft. of purpose-built wet lab space across 24 acres, The Core will deliver the supply that the rapidly evolving life sciences sector has been so desperately seeking in recent years.
“The life sciences sector is very robust right now,” says CBRE’s Todd Cooney, who is working on the leasing of space at The Core. “Ever since the pandemic we’ve seen a lot of people looking to expand their footprints in Canada and the truth of the matter is that we just didn’t have any turnkey inventory available for them. This is the problem we’re solving with The Core.”
The initial phase of development at The Core will comprise 160,000 sq. ft. and is expected to be delivered before 2024. A second phase will follow with 240,000 sq. ft.
San Francisco-based Spear Street Capital, the project’s majority owner, specializes in the development of healthcare, research and technology-oriented properties in the U.S., Canada and Europe. First Gulf, based in Toronto, is a market leader across the office, industrial and retail sectors, with more than $4 billion in developed assets and will become a leader in the Canadian life sciences sector with this project.
“Spear Street and First Gulf have the capacity to build quickly and deliver exactly what the sector needs,” says Cooney, who has overseen the bulk of the life sciences developments in the Kitchener-Waterloo area over the past decade. “Spear Street has a great life sciences portfolio in the U.S. and they’ve been waiting and looking for an opportunity in Canada.
“And this is about as ideal as it gets.”
The Core
Cooney notes that The Core is strategically positioned at the centre of the Southern Ontario life sciences corridor, located along the QEW highway between McMaster Innovation Park in Hamilton, Pill Hill in Meadowvale and MaRS and the Discovery District in Toronto.
While there are a handful of life sciences projects in the contemplation and planning stages in Toronto – primarily involving conversion of older office space into lab facilities – and a number of smaller-scale projects in the works at McMaster Innovation Park, Cooney says none of them can compete with The Core and its accelerated delivery timeline.
“We’re hitting the market in 2023 before anybody else, so which simplifies things for companies in search of life sciences space and delivering a warm shell with its power and loading infrastructure already in place, which will limit the construction costs for life sciences companies looking to locate here.”
“This is not an alternative for those looking for life sciences space in the Toronto area,” Cooney adds. “This is the option. An opportunity of this calibre simply doesn’t exist right now in the Greater Golden Horseshoe Area and Southwestern Ontario.”
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