BY BEN THOMPSON
Zooming in
The approach
Austin Community College is one institution that’s cultivated new arrivals in the sector for years at its Bioscience Incubator in Highland. Early-stage companies can lease shared workspaces and equipment to get their concepts underway, without having to nd and sign an o ce or lab of their own. After a decade in operation, the incubator has developed businesses with varied focuses like rapid COVID-19 tests, food safety, rare diseases, medical glove dispensing and zebra mussel detection. Incubator Director Nancy Lyon said it remains one of few much-needed options for that kind of work in Austin today. This year, UT launches its Innovation Labs startup hub under its Discovery to Impact research program. Texas State University also plans to open an incubator at its Round Rock campus.
Despite that interest, observers say the sec- tor’s future outlook could also depend on more mid-sized lab availability that observers pointed to as a current gap in the market. Jason Scharf, an investor in the life sciences space, said tenants and property owners will have to carefully plan for their needs as both new construction and retro tting projects take place, given how costly and resource-intensive labs can be to open. He also said building out multiple life science hubs, rather than concentrating around a more expensive part of the market like downtown, could help draw and develop more business.
A key piece of the sector’s stability and expansion has been a real estate market that’s now accounting more for life sciences. Headlining new o ce additions is the High- point campus in Northwest Austin with more than 800,000 square feet of labs and o ces. Apple’s Parmer Lane campus is also being rezoned to allow for life science work there. Existing o ce and industrial spaces at Southeast Austin’s MetCenter, future medical facilities in the Innovation District, and proj- ects in Mueller and o Parmer to the east are other notable additions catering to health- and tech-related needs.
10K square feet of lab space Launching fall 2025, currently in soft opening
3 Highpoint in Northwest Austin • Details: multilevel floor plans, high ceilings, heavy load capacity, loading docks and chemical storage space • Address: 6801 River Place Blvd. • Square footage: 860,000 square feet of lab-ready space
6 Charlie lab-ready o ce in the Mueller Business District • Details: lab-ready design with high ceilings, heavy load capacity and high power capacity • Address: 4811 Mueller Blvd. • Square footage: 168,053 square feet of research/lab/of ice space
SOURCE: THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS COMMUNITY IMPACT COURTESY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS UT is launching an incubator at Parmer Labs.
SOURCES: AQUILA COMMERCIAL, KARLIN REAL ESTATE, STREAM REALTY PARTNERS COMMUNITY IMPACT
What’s next
Increased investment Austin’s life science sector has regularly drawn hundreds of millions of dollars in private funding.
With those investments, he said Austin residents stand to bene t from “living in the future.” “We’re not only creating innovation, but it’s being deployed here,” he said. “You start seeing this as a testing ground for all these new business of health companies. … Not just this one drug that only if you have this one disease you will see, but actually an entirely new health care system.”
Alongside those updates, private contributions in the sector are also setting up Austin to become what economic development rm Opportunity Austin called a “full-scale life sciences hub.” The group reported the region has seen more than $1 billion in annual research funding. Scharf said the value of businesses across the area’s health ecosystem surged by nearly 1,000% in just a decade to reach $42 billion last year, thanks in part to dozens of unicorns, or $1 billion-plus companies.
2019
$239.5M
2020
$402.8M
2021
$1,058.8M
2022
$437.2M
2023 2024
$600.1M
$164.3M
2025*
$507.9M
*AS OF JUNE SOURCE: AVISON YOUNG TECHNOLOGIES, CRUNCHBASE COMMUNITY IMPACT
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SOUTH CENTRAL AUSTIN EDITION
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