BRONX, NY (February 2022) — Buildings with flexible and adaptive spaces are critical to attracting growing life-sciences businesses, said Joseph Simone of Simone Development Companies.
“Nationwide, we are seeing proposed construction that emphasizes flexible and adaptive spaces, regardless of whether the end uses are laboratories, classrooms or offices,” said Joseph Simone, president of Simone Development Companies. “Landlords seek buildings whose interiors can be quickly modified to meet new market realities, particularly in the burgeoning life sciences sector.”
Collaboration is prized in the life sciences and other burgeoning industries dependent on innovation, so new buildings are designed to enhance the creative collaboration that leads to new products and breakthroughs.
“The very competitive biomedical research environment demands shared facilities and diverse spaces in which employee teams of various sizes can do their work,” said Joseph Simone.
Simone Development Companies’ Hutchinson Metro Center in the Bronx is an example of contemporary trends in flexible and adaptive building. An ambulatory surgical center–the Bronx’s first bedless hospital–contains open floor plans that allow the hospital to quickly adapt to new health care priorities.
“We have proposed expanding our Hutchinson Metro Center campus to include wet laboratories for medical research. This new facility will include high ceilings and open floor plans that facilitate flexible and adaptive uses,” said Joseph Simone.
The proposed expansion of the Hutchinson Metro Center campus aligns with New York City’s biotech investment in the Morris Park innovation corridor. New York City’s financial commitment to growing the life sciences sector in all its boroughs includes 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.