A biotech startup founded during the pandemic by Northwestern University researchers secured $30 million in financing, enough to open its own Fulton Market laboratory, where it will continue developing a new class of drugs to combat cancer and other diseases.
Grove Biopharma started in a small space run by tech incubator Portal Innovations at 1375 W. Fulton Market, a 13-story life sciences building, and just moved to 17,000 square feet at 400 N. Aberdeen St. Both buildings are part of Fulton Labs and were developed by Trammell Crow Co.
Portal Innovations got the company through its growing pains by providing laboratories, office space and connections needed to secure financing, said Grove Biopharma President and Chief Technology Officer Paul Bertin.
“That did not exist here in Chicago until Portal Innovations,” he said. “It’s a capital-intensive industry, so if you are a brand-new startup coming out of a university lab, you can’t afford to spend your seed financing on a laboratory.”
The expansion is a good signal for an industry that slowed down, both in Chicago and nationwide, as interest rates rose and some venture capital sources dried up. Chicago developers added about 900,000 square feet of life sciences space in the past three years, pushing up the vacancy rate to 17.6%, a level not seen since 2017, according to Colliers, a commercial real estate firm.
But the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s 2023 decision to select Chicago as the home of the $250 million Chan-Zuckerberg BioHub, founded by Priscilla Chan and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and now at 400 N. Aberdeen, will help the city keep growing its local industry, Colliers said.
Portal Innovations was one of the first groups recruited for 1375 W. Fulton Market, completed in 2020 and now almost fully leased, said Trammell Crow Vice President Morgan Baer Blaska.
Portal Innovations’ work is essential if Chicago wants to retain homegrown life science startups, which once headed to California or Cambridge, Massachusetts, where lab space is much more plentiful, she added. The Chicago region has a lot of the ingredients needed to nurture the biotech industry, especially universities such as Northwestern and the University of Chicago, and a highly educated workforce.
“What had been missing is the real estate component,” Blaska said. “In the past, a company on this growth trajectory would have considered moving to one of the coasts, but both Portal and Fulton Labs have provided an environment where science startups can grow and thrive here in Chicago.”
400 N. Aberdeen is part of Trammell Crow’s more than 2 million-square-foot Fulton Park campus, which includes 1375 W. Fulton Market, a luxury multifamily development and Fulton Market’s only public park. The company also recently finished the 175,000-square-foot Evanston Labs near Northwestern and the 302,000-square-foot Hyde Park Labs near the University of Chicago.
Trammell Crow completed the 16-story 400 N. Aberdeen in 2022, and it’s now more than 30% leased, according to CoStar. Other tenants include the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Chicagoland Climate Investment Alliance and Mattiq, a clean chemistry firm.
Blaska said it’s important for Chicago to have ready-made lab space, as life sciences startups can’t predict scientific breakthroughs or when they will secure funding.
“When the demand pops, the demand pops immediately,” she said.
