The U.S. Department of Energy dedicated the $75 million Grid Storage Launchpad in August of 2024 at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Accelerating the development of novel decarbonization solutions, the 85,000-sf facility provides 30 energy research labs, multiple conference rooms, and open office areas with flexible workstations for 100 staff members.
The decreasing amount of time researchers spend in their labs is changing research facility design and space allocation, with an increased need for lab support space, a more significant reliance on core facilities, the creation of additional write-up and data analysis environments, and the purposeful inclusion of collaboration spaces.
Eli Lilly and Company opened the $700 million Lilly Seaport Innovation Center (LSC) in Boston in August of 2024. Developed by Alexandria Real Estate Equities and National Development, the 346,000-rsf facility offers Class A research environments for biomedical discovery. The 12-story structure also houses the first Lilly Gateway Labs on the East Coast to enable biotech start-ups to collaborate with Lilly scientists.
One United Properties began construction in August of 2024 on One Technology District, a semiconductor R&D center in Bucharest, Romania. Infineon Technologies will occupy the facility and has committed to a 15-year lease that represents a total contract value of $62.2 million. Positioned to become the largest semiconductor hub in southeast Europe, the innovation complex will offer a gross leasable area of 222,000 sf, including 32,000 sf of next-generation lab space.
Highly accurate badging data generated by workers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., is giving space planners and administrators powerful new insights for making more efficient space planning decisions in the post-pandemic era. As the nation’s largest Department of Defense University Affiliated Research Center, the 450-acre campus consists of nearly 4 million sf of space, including cutting-edge cybersecurity, spacecraft, and robotics facilities. Badging data from APL’s 8,000-plus workers provides detailed information for comparing projected space needs with the hybrid utilization behaviors established during the COVID-19 pandemic. These new data-driven insights are now being used to inform decision-making for high-cost capital construction projects and short-term space planning initiatives.
