Charlestown Development Watch: Charlestown’s Building 108 in the Navy Yard.

Charlestown’s Building 108 has been planned for demolition and redevelopment since 2021. The new facility is slated to feature a biomedical office, 78,370 square feet of dedicated research and development labs, underground parking, and a small ground-floor retail space.

The developers, Power House CNY, noted that part of the reason for the project’s delay has been waiting for the life sciences market to rebound. Boston has long been a hot spot for life science research, but an influx of venture capital funding during the COVID-19 pandemic has overinflated the market. The $13.6 billion investments in 2021 have faced a steep, $6 billion drop off in the past four years.

Similar projects, like 701 Congress Street in the South Boston Seaport, opened empty earlier this year. Colliers reported 16.3 million square feet of lab space available, with an additional 3 to 4 million currently in development. 

This lab, like nearly a third of all lab space in the state, does not currently have a tenant nor did the developer, Geoffrey Lewis, project much confidence that the market rebound was imminent.

“There seems to be an oversupply of projects in the pipeline like ours, but also a little oversupply of existing products in the life science market and biotech kind of at large,” he said. “If we can find a tenant, we’re off to the races, but I think the time of building things on spec has passed.”

With the project scheduled to break ground by 2027, there is certainly time for market conditions to improve, but the abundance of available space and diminished public funding are steep barriers to overcome.

In 2024, the Massachusetts legislature approved $500 million over the next decade in biomedical funding, half of what Governor Maura Healey pushed for and what Deval Patrick secured in 2008. President Donald Trump’s cuts to the National Institutes of Health, though held up in court, would further harm the biomedical industry and reduce demand for new labs.

This project is still under review from the Boston Planning Department. Community members will be alerted when the project goes to before the board forapproval. Though the public comment period has ended, questions, comments, or concerns can still be directed to Sarah Peck at [email protected].