Blackstone’s BioMed Realty scores $422M refi on South SF lab campus 

Blackstone’s BioMed Realty has scored a hefty loan to refinance part of Gateway of Pacific, its vast lab campus in South San Francisco. 

JPMorgan, Citi and Deutsche Bank provided a $422.2 million loan on the first 510,000-square-foot phase of the campus at 601 Gateway Boulevard, according to a Moody’s report. 

The loan will be packaged into a larger $1.2 billion commercial mortgage-backed securities pool, backed by three other BioMed Realty properties in Boston. The CMBS deal is expected to close next month.

Across the entire CMBS deal, BioMed Realty will pay interest at the secured financing overnight rate, a benchmark interest rate, plus 2.12 percent. As of Jan. 29, that benchmark was 5.31 percent.

The debt will initially mature in 2026, though BioMed has options to extend the debt through February 2029. BioMed did not respond to a request for comment.

BioMed completed the first phase of the project in 2021, and completed the third phase last year. The entire project is expected to span 2.2 million square feet when it’s finished.

One of Blackstone’s opportunistic real estate funds and a group of co-investors acquired BioMed Realty in 2016 in a deal valued at about $8.1 billion. The Blackstone fund had tried to sell off BioMed, or take it public, in 2020, but reportedly agreed to sell it to another Blackstone fund.

Lab campuses have emerged as one of the few asset classes that attract lenders over the last year. 

This month, Preylock Holdings scored a $181 million refinancing package on Nvidia’s lab campus in Santa Clara, dedicated to research and development for the graphics processor maker. 

About 63 percent of the first phase of Gateway of Pacific is classified as lab space, with the remaining space being office. The loan is also backed by 1,300 parking spaces and a 48,000-square-foot building with a restaurant, spa and health club for tenants. 

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The first phase is leased to two tenants — 94 percent to pharmaceutical company AbbVie, known for making arthritis drug Humira, and the rest to Erasca, a clinical-stage company focused on cancer treatments. 

In 2022, BioMed paid $80 million to buy a rental car property next to Gateway of Pacific.