BlueRock Therapeutics has become the anchor tenant in Seeker Labs’ new Catalyst building, a purpose-built life sciences facility at 77 Wade Ave. in Toronto's Junction neighbourhood.

While some office buildings have been converted to life sciences uses, Catalyst will be Toronto's first privately funded, purpose-built life sciences facility delivered in more than 20 years when it opens for occupancy in about two months. It’s been designed to support advanced laboratory and research uses, including wet lab and clinical research operations.

Cary Solomon, the president and chief executive officer of Toronto-based development company Next Property Group, founded Seeker Labs in December 2022 and is its managing partner.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its need for vaccines helped him realize that, while Canada produces a lot of very talented scientists and researchers, it lacked the infrastructure and capital to keep a lot of them in the country when there were more opportunities south of the border. That prompted him to launch Seeker Labs and Catalyst, its first project, began construction in April 2023.

“Seeker Labs is a single-focused company that’s planning to build a portfolio of innovative life science, AI-enabled buildings across Canada,” Solomon told RENX. 

Building an ecosystem

Solomon believes the private sector, which has previously relied on government grants for research, will take on additional responsibilities on its own as it sees the potential in life sciences expansion.

He also thinks philanthropists who in the past have donated to hospitals will now consider making impact investments in facilities and organizations that have the potential to produce cures for serious diseases and ailments and save lives.

“We are helping build the ecosystem here in Canada,” said Solomon.

A large Canadian pension fund that wishes to remain anonymous is the capital partner for Catalyst.

Preparing Catalyst for BlueRock and other tenants

“We're getting ready to transition the building from under construction to an operating asset,” said Solomon. “We've got our property management people in there now. 

“We've got building engineering in there doing all kinds of testing, making sure that everything is running, and there's still construction going on in the building.”

Blue Rock is the first tenant in the 155,000-square-foot Catalyst and will occupy approximately 80,000 square feet, comprised of three entire floors and some additional space.

Since its founding in 2016, BlueRock has maintained research, development and manufacturing operations in Toronto. Today it’s a wholly owned, independently operated subsidiary of Bayer that’s focused on developing cell therapies for the treatment of degenerative diseases. 

BlueRock has signed a long-term lease and will customize its premises at Catalyst to support its ongoing research, clinical development and manufacturing activities.

Available space in Catalyst

Catalyst has four floors of core and shell space — for which tenants are responsible for designing, building and operating themselves to meet their needs — and three of them are being leased by BlueRock. The remaining core and shell floor has approximately 25,000 square feet of space.

Catalyst also has two other available floors for smaller turnkey laboratory and office spaces. 

Seeker Labs’ Pacer Program provides execution-focused teams with plug-and-play, commercial-grade lab space with flexible configurations and term commitments. These come in two formats:

• an open lab environment with dedicated lab benches for teams, direct access to shared equipment and infrastructure, dedicated office desks and meeting room access;
• and dedicated self-contained lab and office suites, ranging from 900 to 4,000 square feet, for teams requiring additional privacy or room to scale.

Seeker Labs’ Graduate Suites are purpose-built for organizations ready to execute at scale and range in size from 4,500 to 7,500 square feet of combined lab and furnished office space with 20 to 30 benches per lab. They come with fume hoods, lab support rooms and dedicated cold storage as well as access to meeting spaces and kitchen/café facilities.

Other leasing activity for Catalyst

Colliers has been retained by Seeker Labs as the listing agent to bring in more tenants to Catalyst, which Solomon said is generating a lot of interest.

“Like in any office building, the smaller the suite, the less time from lease signing to move-in there is,” explained Solomon. “Smaller companies don't spend a tremendous amount of time looking around.

“They find something and they literally want it in the next two weeks, so that's literally what's happening.” 

Future sites for Seeker Labs facilities

Seeker Labs is doing due diligence on three other employment sites in the Junction neighbourhood that it could potentially acquire.

“We think that particular area is ripe for a cluster of buildings like this,” said Solomon. “Colliers did a demographic study in that area, and we found that many science-related people live in that area.”

The node offers convenient access to the Bloor GO Transit station, the Bloor UP Express station, the Dundas West Toronto Transit Commission station, the West Toronto Railpath and Bloor Street West’s retail and restaurant corridor. Housing prices in the area aren’t “out of this world,” Solomon added.