Developer Winstanley bets big on New Haven as a bioscience hub

Natalie Missakian  eveloper Carter Winstanley has spent the last 22 years working to build up a life science hub in New Haven. In the beginning, he set a modest benchmark for success.

“My original goal was to get 300 George St. leased,” Winstanley says, referencing his transformation of a vacant Southern New England Telephone company building into a high-tech home for Elm City biotechs.

Two decades later, 300 George is at capacity, and two subsequent Winstanley bioscience buildings — 25 Science Park and 100 College St., home of Alexion Pharmaceuticals — are also full.

This spring, he plans to kick off construction on a second, $100 million bioscience tower at 101 College St., set to open in 2023, and he is finalizing deals with major tenants.

And last September, he added Temple Medical Center to his holdings in the city’s Route 34 bioscience corridor, prompting the New Haven Independent to give the two-block stretch near Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital a new nickname: “Winstanleyville.”

But the 51-year-old real estate developer isn’t declaring victory.

“I constantly move the goal line for what I think success is,” says Winstanley, who leads Massachusetts-based Winstanley Enterprises with his father, David, and brother, Adam.

“Today my definition of success is creating a sustainable life science community in Connecticut,” he says. “I would say we’re not done yet, and that’s really why we are investing so heavily in Connecticut and New Haven.”

Winstanley draws his inspiration from Cambridge’s Kendall Square, where he lived during the late 1980s and early 1990s. He watched the area near MIT and Harvard evolve from a collection of old warehouses and industrial buildings into one of the biggest and most highly concentrated life sciences markets in the world.

“You had great educational institutions, you had great hospitals, you had great private-sector partners and you had a state that was very actively promoting [the bioscience industry],” he says. “We have most if not all of those same ingredients in New Haven. So I look at that and say: Why can’t we create that?”

He pointed to pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca’s recent deal to acquire New Haven-born biotech powerhouse Alexion for $39 billion as a “clear validation of the quality of science” being produced in the state. Although Alexion is now headquartered in Boston, it still has some 500 employees working at its New Haven research facility.

While it's too early to know what impact the deal will have locally, Winstanley says he is hopeful AstraZeneca will see the value in the New Haven operation and continue to invest in it.

Lab space crunch

Winstanley’s latest project at 101 College tackles what city officials and local bioscience leaders identify as the single biggest challenge for the industry here: a severe shortage of lab space.

Area realtors have reported difficulties finding adequate space in the New Haven region for long-term tenants who are looking to grow, leading to concerns that they might move their startups out of the state.

“There’s a lot of organic growth happening in New Haven because it has everything it takes to create a bioscience cluster,” says Dawn Hocevar, CEO of BioCT, an organization that advocates for the state’s bioscience industry. “The biggest obstacle we have right now is a lack of lab space.”

Winstanley’s 101 College St. would add another 500,000 square feet of bioscience space to his existing 1.5 million-square-foot footprint in the city.

The 10-story building, to be built opposite Alexion tower over the existing Route 34 connector, will offer a range of spaces for companies in all stages of the startup life cycle, according to Winstanley.

The tower will include 100,000 square feet of incubator space for newborn startups as well as space for smaller companies that are just beginning to expand their teams.

He says he is also working on lease deals with “large, successful existing companies” in the area, but is not ready to provide details. Yale University is also expected to be a tenant.

“The idea is to have a building that offers everything from a single bench to a space that can be 100,000-square-feet plus,” he says. Startups will be able to grow “incrementally from a single bench, to two or three or four benches, and eventually into suites as well as larger self-contained spaces” without having to take on the disruption or expense of relocating.

Winstanley initially planned to break ground on the project last August, but delays due to COVID-19 have pushed back the start date until spring. Construction is expected to take two years.

Meanwhile, to help ease the immediate space crunch, he hopes to soon offer some additional lab space in his newest New Haven asset, the Temple Medical Center at 40-60 Temple St., “to help bridge tenants to that 101 [College] delivery date.”

Winstanley bought the complex, which includes two buildings and part of a parking garage, for $21 million last September and is planning a “significant” renovation, although he declined to say how much he will invest in the building.

“What we’d like to do is offer a number of suites for smaller tenants in that building to allow them to have a year or two of runway before moving across the street into 101, where they may step up in square footage,” he says.

Pioneering development

Winstanley has been a pivotal player in New Haven’s bioscience ecosystem almost since the industry’s inception in the 1990s, when Yale embarked on a more aggressive push to commercialize research coming out of the university.

“Prior to his purchase of 300 George Street, it was very difficult for startups coming out of Yale University to find a home base to really incubate and build up their brand,” says city Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli.

At the time, the only lab space options were in Science Park, but many startups wanted to be closer to their research at Yale School of Medicine.

“That was a very important innovation that Carter brought to the marketplace,” says Piscitelli, adding that he has paved the way for other developers who are now showing interest.

While the pandemic has been tough on landlords and developers, Winstanley says the life-sciences market is somewhat insulated. Most scientific research requires specialized equipment and can’t be done from home.

“I also think if we’ve learned anything coming through the COVID crisis it’s that the life sciences are critical,” he says.

Future vision

When he looks ahead to the next 10 years, Winstanley envisions an additional 5 million square feet of privately developed commercial life science space springing up around the medical school and hospital.

He sees the area teeming with a mix of new, mid-stage and mature life science companies that drive the local economy, provide jobs for residents in surrounding neighborhoods, and attract new people to live, work, shop and dine downtown.

With more than 40 bioscience companies already putting down roots in the New Haven area, according to city officials, Winstanley says the region already “has a lot to be proud of.”

“I think success for me will be when the base of tenants is broad enough that if somebody fails or moves out, it’s not a crisis,” he says.

“The Kendall Square market is so tight that when somebody fails and goes out of business, it’s almost viewed as a good thing because it turns over space opportunities,” says Winstanley. “That’s an incredible luxury to be in that position. That’s one great way to define success.”

Report: Collective bargaining agreements create 'robust' middle-class jobs for union construction workers

Kim Slowey  

• A new report says collective bargaining agreements help create "robust" middle-class careers and make significant contributions to local economies. The report, released this week, was produced by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• The authors analyzed CBAs between the Mid-America Regional Bargaining Association and eight trade unions in the Chicago area. They found that a typical union journeyworker earns $77,300 per year, which is comparable to that of urban Illinois workers with bachelor's degrees. The study also found that apprenticeship programs paid by CBAs turn out 97% of all local construction apprentices.
• CBAs, the authors wrote, supported $7.5 billion in wages for 97,000 northeastern Illinois union construction workers in 2019 and, through worker spending, created 49,000 additional jobs per year in other industries. Without CBAs, economic activity in northeastern Illinois would decrease by $2.2 billion each year and lose 13,000 jobs, the report said. At the state level, Illinois would lose $315 million total in sales and income tax revenues, and local governments would lose $251 million in property tax revenues.

CBAs are agreements negotiated between employers and unions and cover work terms like rates of pay and other conditions of employment. The study said additional benefits for construction workers in northeastern Illinois covered by CBAs were:

• Wages increased by 11% over three years, beating a 6% rate of inflation.
• The union worker household homeownership rate is 76% compared to 73% for nonunion worker households.
• Union workers are covered by private health insurance at a rate of 98% compared to 70% for their nonunion counterparts. 
• Only 3% of union construction workers receive assistance via the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) compared to 12% of nonunion construction workers.

The big takeaway from the report, said coauthor Frank Manzo, policy director at the IEPI, is that collective bargaining agreements have positive economic impacts beyond just paychecks and that the study can serve as an example of how CBAs benefit communities.

"The Chicago area's construction industry offers a roadmap for family-sustaining careers in a post-COVID economy and, in particular, in construction," said Manzo.

Some construction employer groups, like the Associated Builders and Contractors Illinois Chapter, take issue with the suggestion that CBAs might be necessary in order for workers to achieve financial success.

"The construction industry provides an ideal career path to the middle class, regardless of union affiliation," said Alicia Martin, president of the ABC Illinois Chapter. Martin said that merit shop workers have more take-home pay than their union counterparts, but the ABC could not provide any state or national data on nonunion construction wages.

Martin did point to statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey that found in 2019 there were more nonunion construction workers in Illinois than union workers, although the survey did not report wage data. 

However, according to coauthor Robert Bruno, director of the labor education program at PMCR, CBAs provide an opportunity for employers and workers to sit down, without government mandate, and decide what’s needed for the employer to be profitable and for workers to earn a fair wage.

“I think what people don’t get,” Bruno said, “is that the collective bargaining process empowers the parties to put on the table what is important to them — to both parties — with an understanding and appreciation that compromise is absolutely essential. … It is an incredibly powerful problem-solving tool to bring these two parties together who defend their own interests but then find common ground.”

Newington finalizing tax agreement with developer looking to build $11 million hotel in town

Erica Drzewiecki  NEWINGTON – The town is now finalizing a tax agreement with a developer looking to build an $11.1 million hotel at 712 Cedar St.