The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded the State of Rhode Island $82 million for the construction of a new State Health Laboratory, as the current facilities have aging infrastructure, substandard life-safety systems, poor ventilation, and an antiquated building design. The Rhode Island Commerce Corporation (“Commerce”) with RESGroup’s assistance issued a request for proposals to find a qualified development partner to build the facility but required that, in addition to the 80,000 SF State Health Lab, the building also contain lab space available for private life science companies. The lack of available lab space is a significant constraint on the Rhode Island life science ecosystem, with developers unable to meet investor returns at the rents required to build expensive lab space. As such, Commerce believed a developer would be able to leverage the federal funding for the State laboratory portion of the building to offset the significant infrastructure costs required by private lab tenants.
RESGroup analyzed the eight developer proposals submitted in response to the RFP. An extensive matrix was prepared that detailed all the proposals to provide a comparison of the responses for the selection committee. As the CDC funding is time restricted, the accelerated project timeline required that RESGroup manage weekly calls to update the client and ensure that evaluation milestones were achieved throughout the selection process. A “scorecard” tool was provided to the client that allowed selection committee members to easily compare and score based on their established criteria. A short list of 4 developers was selected to respond to more detailed questions about their proposals using a similar evaluation process. Several factors were considered critical to ensuring a successful development project. Given the complexity and cost of constructing laboratories, teams with recent lab development, project management, leasing experience and a feasible financial proposal were prioritized.
Ancora L&G was selected as the private developer for this project, and the new RISHL will be housed in a 212,000 square foot building at Richmond and Clifford Streets in the state-owned I-195 Redevelopment District.