BRONX, NY (September 27, 2021) — Joseph Simone, President of Simone Development Companies, announced that a development boom is coming to New York City neighborhoods where teaching hospitals will expand their life sciences research.
“New York City is home to many of the country’s leading medical research institutions, so it makes sense that municipal leaders want to expand this sector by promoting health-tech incubators and wet labs,” said Joe Simone, whose company has its own plans for building wet laboratories.
New York City recently increased its investment in Life Sci NYC to $1 billion as part of an effort to transform underused properties and land into wet laboratories for medical research and med-tech start-ups.
So far, New York City’s biotech investments include a $13 million grant to Montefiore Medical Center and its medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine to launch the Einstein-Montefiore Biotechnology Accelerated Research Center. The center will create a biomanufacturing facility focused on cell, gene, and antibody therapy production. The Bronx-based center will be open to early-stage and established companies.
Across the street from the proposed biotech facility, Simone Development Companies’ Hutchinson Metro Center includes an ambulatory surgical center for Montefiore. At the south end of the Hutchinson Metro Center, Joseph Simone has proposed building an office park that includes wet laboratories for medical research.
“Researchers and biotech start-ups want to be near each other because they thrive on collaboration. In the next 10 years the neighborhood surrounding the new research center will undergo a renaissance with the construction of a new Metro-North train station at Morris Park, new housing for researchers and students, and new offices for growing biotech companies,” said Joseph Simone.
Simone Development Companies’ Hutchinson Metro Center is part of an on-going redevelopment of the former Bronx Psychiatric Center campus. Phase 1 of the campus redevelopment envisions the creation of 100,000 square feet of biotech/research laboratories.
According to the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the life sciences sector has seen an average annual growth of 50+ biotech companies since 2016.