Joel Marcus, the longtime head of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, sees few near-term challengers to the established biotech hubs of Boston, San Diego and San Francisco.
Joel Marcus built a real estate empire on the life sciences industry’s steady growth. Over three decades, his company Alexandria Real Estate Equities has amassed tens of millions of square feet of office and laboratory space in drug development hubs like Boston, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Those holdings have given Alexandria a front row seat to biotech’s boom over much of the past decade through to the sector’s pandemic highs and more recent downturn.
“Too much money over too long a period went into the industry in a way that created too many companies pursuing too many opportunities. That never ends well,” said Marcus. “What the industry has learned through the shakeout of the last two years is more discipline at the front end of forming companies.