THE WOODLANDS – (Realty News Report) – Lexicon Pharmaceuticals has sold its office and research campus in The Woodlands to another life sciences company.
The 12.4-acre campus comprises five buildings totaling 260,950 square feet at 8800 Technology Forest Drive in The Woodlands, north of Houston.
San Francisco-based biopharmaceutical firm Nurix Therapeutics contracted to buy the property in November. Financial terms of the sale were not disclosed.
NAI Partners brokers Dan Boyles and Jon Silberman represented Lexicon Pharmaceuticals in the transaction. Lexicon will relocate its corporate headquarters to a new facility elsewhere in The Woodlands.
“We’ve been seeing life sciences real estate activity ramping up in and around the Greater Houston area in a big way,” Boyles said. “When we initially listed the property, we thought it might have more broad appeal as a redevelopment opportunity, but there was strong interest from laboratory, office and biological manufacturing users, underscoring Houston’s growing appeal as a life sciences hub.”
NAI Partners noted that this sale is the single largest commercial real estate transaction in the life sciences sector in the Greater Houston area in 2020.
The primary building on the former Lexicon campus is a 128,400-square-foot Class A office property that includes laboratory space. Other site components include a one-story flex building with lab and office space and two special-use facilities. The campus sits just off Research Forest Drive.
Nurix Therapeutics focuses on the discovery, development and commercialization of small molecule therapies that modulate cellular protein levels, pursuing novel treatment approaches for cancer and immune disorders.
Deed restrictions on the Lexicon property in The Woodlands were recently amended to permit light manufacturing, including the production of pharmaceuticals and the manufacture of cells for use in cellular therapies such as tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy and natural killer (NK) cell therapy.
Locating in the Houston area provides companies like Nurix convenient access to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the nation’s largest cancer center and a facility frequently ranked among the top cancer hospitals in U.S. News & World Report’s annual hospital rankings.
Lexicon Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company that applies a gene science approach—drawing on Nobel Prize–winning technology—to discover and develop targeted medicines for people living with serious, chronic conditions.
Some years ago, Houston-based Kirksey Architects prepared a site plan for the Lexicon campus that outlined a layout anticipating new low-rise construction. Current deed restrictions limit the height of new buildings to 55 feet.
The Woodlands, located about 27 miles north of downtown Houston, is a 28,000-acre community that opened in 1974. The community was founded by the late George P. Mitchell, a Galveston native and oil industry pioneer.
Dec. 30, 2020 Realty News Report Copyright 2020
File: California Pharma Play in Texas
File: (2) The Woodlands, George Mitchell. California Pharma Play in Texas. Nurix.