Forest City puts construction of first east-side life sciences building on 'fast track'

05-26-05 -- Construction of the first lab and office building for the East Baltimore Life Sciences and Technology Park will begin in August, according to the head of the project’s Phase One development team.

Construction of the eight-story, 295,000 square-foot building at 855 Wolfe Street “is going to be very much a fast-track process,” Peter Calkins, senior vice president and chief development officer of Forest City Enterprises, told more than 90 GBC members who attended a May 26 breakfast briefing on the east-side project. The building is targeted for completion in July 2007.

Meanwhile, construction of 460 housing units to be included in Phase One’s neighborhood revitalization will begin in spring 2006, with 350 units targeted for completion by summer 2007 and the remaining 110 units to be completed by fall 2007. One third of the units will be earmarked for low-income home buyers, while two-thirds will be moderately priced, Calkins said.

Ultimately, the 31-acres north of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions that will comprise the first phase of the east-side revitalization will feature five buildings for life sciences research, offering 1.1 million square feet of lab and office space. Phase One will also ultimately include 850 residential units and up to 80,000 square-feet of retail space.

Forest City’s local partners on the east-side project include Doracon/Lambda Development, LLC; Legacy–Harrison Enterprises, LLC; Banks Contracting Co., Inc., The Wilkinson Group, LLC; and A&R Development Corp.

The project is fashioned, in many ways, after University Park in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Also developed by Forest City, that project blended 1.5 million square feet of lab space with 674 residences, 75,000 square-feet of restaurants and retail space, and a 210-room hotel and conference center.

Like the Cambridge initiative, Baltimore’s east-side life sciences park and neighborhood revitalization will use open space as the “defining tool,” Calkins said. “Open space belongs to one and all. The concept for a New England town center is really the concept that we used.”

In East Baltimore, “the goal is to have balance,” Calkins said. “We need to be transformative. This is the new East Baltimore community.”

To view Calkins' powerpoint presentation, click here.