The deal marks a significant deployment for the Tishman Speyer-backed life sciences specialist’s second fund, launched late last year.
Michael Juliano
Life sciences specialist Breakthrough Properties has acquired a newly delivered biomanufacturing facility outside Seattle for $78 million, PERE can reveal.
Breakthrough, a joint venture of New York-based manager Tishman Speyer and Los Angeles-based family office Bellco Capital, acquired the 270,000- square-foot property through its Breakthrough Properties Growth Portfolio II. Breakthrough launched the value-add fund last year and held a first close in November on $330 million, plus an additional $100 million in co-investments, PERE previously reported. Breakthrough is targeting $1.5 billion in total commitments to the vehicle.
On top of purchasing the facility – located at 215 Shuksan Way in Everett, Washington, about 30 miles north of Seattle – Breakthrough said it also secured a separate 21-year lease for the entire campus with a “global biopharma company”, which the firm declined to identify. The seller was Dermody Properties, a Nevada-based logistics real estate firm, according to a regulatory filing.
The former tenant was Seagen, a biotech company that vacated the building after Pfizer acquired the company in December 2023 and halted construction in March 2024, according to BioProcess International.
Breakthrough said the deal represents its first investment in Washington’s Puget Sound region. The company owns 12 other life sciences properties across the US and three in Europe, according to its website.
Breakthrough closed its debut fund, Breakthrough Properties Growth Portfolio I, on $3 billion in 2022 at a time when life sciences was among private real estate’s most sought-after categories. That inaugural fund also had a $1.5 billion target, which it significantly exceeded after hitting its hard cap and taking in additional co-investment capital.
Like its predecessor, BPGP II will be focused on major biopharma markets in the US, the UK and Continental Europe, a scope which Breakthrough says makes it unique among life sciences managers.
Speaking to PERE at the time of the fund’s first close last year, Breakthrough CEO Dan Belldegrun declined to give details on the target markets or the regional breakdown for the fund’s deployments, but he noted that the firm is seeking an overall value-add return profile, with investments ranging from purpose-built development and value-add conversions, as well as some core or core-plus investments in existing assets.
Unlike the previous fund, which was used for several spec-development projects including a 10-acre campus in San Diego leased to Pfizer and an AstraZeneca cell-therapy lab in Amsterdam, Breakthrough’s second fund will mainly target dislocation among existing assets.
Tishman and Bellco launched Breakthrough in 2019. Tishman, which is ranked 27 on the PERE 100 list of the world’s largest private real estate managers, has $65.9 billion of assets under management. Breakthrough has $2.69 billion, according to PEI Group data.