Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. will pay $720 million to acquire its 150-acre corporate headquarters campus in Westchester, The Landmark at Eastview, from Biomed Realty L.P., the fast-expanding biotechnology company announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing at the close of business in 2016. Regeneron and Biomed signed a purchase agreement on Dec. 30.
Biomed Realty in 2007 paid $98.5 million for the property, the former Union Carbide campus that straddles Old Saw Mill River Road in the towns of Greenburgh and Mount Pleasant, from an affiliate of LCOR Inc. LCOR had paid $82 million for the campus in late 1999. Biomed, based in San Diego, in recent years has built additional office and laboratory facilities on the site primarily for Regeneron.
The acquisition would follow Regeneron”™s recent $50 million purchase of the New York Life Insurance office and campus in Sleepy Hollow and its $73 million purchase in 2015 of an undeveloped 100-acre parcel in the town of Greenburgh, adjacent to The Landmark at Eastview property, where the biotech company plans to develop a roughly 1-million-square-foot research and development campus. Regeneron in 2015 also expanded into 297,000 square feet of office and laboratory space in two new Landmark at Eastview buildings built by Biomed Realty to suit its anchor tenant.
Regeneron plans to acquire the Landmark with lease financing from Banc of America Leasing & Capital LLC, an affiliate of which would hold the title to the property. It will lease the campus for five years with lower rental payments than those under the company”™s existing lease with Biomed Realty. At the end of the lease, Regeneron can choose to extend the lease term, buy the campus at a predetermined amount or sell the property to a third party of behalf of its landlord.
If unable to obtain the Banc of America lease financing, Regeneron plans to close the deal with cash on hand and proceeds from other potential financing sources, including the company’s $750 million senior unsecured revolving credit facility.
Regeneron has been a tenant since 1989 at the Landmark, where the then 1-year-old company initially leased some 12,000 square feet of space. With approximately 2,500 of its more than 5,000 employees now based there, Regeneron occupies 80 percent, about 1.1 million square feet, of office and laboratory space in 10 buildings.
Regeneron officials in their Dec. 30 SEC filing said about 20 percent of the campus is leased by other tenants. Those companies are Profectus Biosciences Inc. and Progenics Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Pending government approval, existing development rights on the Landmark campus would allow for construction of more than 500,000 square feet of additional office and laboratory space, Regeneron reported.
Formerly a publicly traded real estate investment trust, Biomed Realty went private a year ago this month when a Blackstone Real Estate Partners fund acquired the 12-year-old company for $8 billion. Biomed Realty also owns the Ardsley Park office and laboratory campus in the town of Greenburgh.
Is this among the largest such purchases in Westchester?