The $700 million Taystee Lab Building sits in the Manhattanville Factory District, but the laboratory goes beyond West Harlem’s manufacturing history. Surrounded by brick buildings on West 126th Street, Taystee spans 11 floors, with glass windows that overlook Columbia University and the City College of New York. Inside any of the currently vacant labs, a fuzzy, fireproofing spray coats steel columns — code-ready for life sciences tenants in the once-industrial neighborhood.
“Good, bad or indifferent, gentrification has transformed Harlem,” said attorney Larry English, a board member of the East Harlem Development Corporation and former chairman of Manhattan Community Board 9. “This is not the Harlem of 20 years ago coming out of the crack epidemic … West Harlem has the potential to be one of the epicenters of life science in the nation.”
This potential for life sciences — roughly defined as any science that pertains to living organisms — reflects both the revitalization of Harlem and the industry’s growing New York City footprint. According to Yardi Matrix data, Manhattan and Queens currently have 3.5 million square feet of life sciences projects completed or under construction, with an additional 2.3 million square feet in planned Manhattan developments.
Across cities, life sciences endeavors “to discover things that help human beings that nobody’s been able to do before,” explained Scott Metzner, one of two principals at Taystee’s developer Janus Property Company, which also produced the neighboring Mink, Malt House and Sweets buildings. These projects create a commercial corridor that houses bio-tech tenants such as BioBus, Quicksilver Biosciences and biotech incubator Harlem Biospace.
Yet New York’s life sciences efforts, both in and out of Harlem, have long been overshadowed by industry powerhouses like Boston and San Francisco. Cambridge, Ma, especially, hosts innovation giants — most notably Covid vaccine-makers Moderna and Pfizer — and major academic institutions in Harvard, MIT and more. Per Yardi Matrix, Boston is building 8.2 million square feet of life sciences space, and boasts a 10.1 million-square-foot industry portfolio from this decade alone.
“Every city wants to be the next Boston or San Francisco,” admitted Dr. Brian Brown, director of the Icahn Genomics Institute at Mount Sinai. However, “the bones of New York for research — for a biotech hub — I think, are the single best in the country.”
Within New York, it’s Harlem — particularly West Harlem — that’s increasingly exercising those bones. Full of vacated pre-war buildings, West Harlem has leveraged that empty space to nurture life sciences research anchored by the City College of New York and Columbia. These institutions, alongside Metzner’s buildings, form what has become the West Harlem Innovation Triangle.
The universities have also undertaken various expansions, including 2014’s Advanced Science Research Center and 2016’s Jerome L. Green Science Center. Meanwhile in East Harlem, the newly-constructed Labs on 121 has been developed near the New York Proton Center, Mount Sinai and the Henry J. Carter Specialty Hospital. Not to mention, Mayor Adams has allocated $27 million for the life sciences.
Yet it’s not any one of these initiatives, institutions or even developments that indicates Harlem’s life sciences potential; rather, the neighborhood doubles as an ecosystem able to attract and retain a life sciences workforce, not only through biotech companies and universities but also through (relatively)reasonable rent prices, mentorship opportunities and the ancillary infrastructure that makes a place desirable.
Three years ago, Dr. Vladislav Sandler, CEO of Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals, made what he called an “opportunistic decision” to move to West Harlem’s Mink Building. Previously based at Brooklyn’s SUNY Downstate, Sandler appreciated the neighborhood’s asking rents; for 10,000 square feet, Sandler pays between $80 to $90 per square foot — less than the $100 per square foot price he found elsewhere in his Manhattan search.
Price alone, however, may get a tenant through the door, but it doesn’t reflect the company’s larger scientific endeavors. Rather, Sandler also keeps Hemogenyx’s research mice in Columbia’s facilities, cashing in on the university’s proximity. Harlem likewise offers access to Mount Sinai, Rockefeller, Cornell, Sloan Kettering, Einstein and NYU — all easily reachable via Harlem’s multiple subway and bus lines.
While universities scatter across New York City, Harlem combines them in a cluster, which allows for both access and collaboration, or, at the very least, motivation. From the Starbucks on the corner of 125th and Broadway, Sandler has routinely noticed the passing by of a Nobel Prize recipient.
“When you have all these buildings side by side and the people are eating lunch in the same coffee shops … you start to mix ideas and that becomes an innovation engine unto itself, an organic one in the same way that New York has built itself up in finance,” said Brown.
That’s not to overlook the growth or potential of New York City’s other life sciences projects. Turtle Bay’s The Alexandria Center for Life Science runs proximal to New York University (though it’s been embroiled in a construction-related scandal), while additional biotech facilities crop up around Brooklyn’s Sunset Park and other boroughs.
Many of these developments, however, represent one-off projects rather than elements of a robust and open scientific network like has risen in Harlem. “Instead of all these sort of opportunistic single projects, let’s sort of drop anchor in a neighborhood and really make an impact,” said Metzner, though he’s not immune to the realities of the life sciences industry.
The pandemic and ensuing stock market shock hurt start-ups, resulting in contraction across key life sciences markets. Likewise, Yardi Matrix reports an over-estimation of lab space and excess of supply, while, in the past two years, Pfizer has closed sites in places like North Carolina, Seattle and New Jersey. Elizabeth Fassberg, executive director at Life Science Cares, said she’s struggled to raise funds due to national industry layoffs.
The city’s housing options have also presented a roadblock for life sciences growth, as biotech doesn’t exactly lend itself to remote work — nor does the city, even Harlem, classify as low-cost. “The housing situation in New York is a make or break for the biotech,” said Brown, noting that biotech employees aren’t making billions of dollars.
Even so, Harlem may be one of the more affordable places to live in Manhattan. Between June and August of this year, West Harlem recorded a median asking rent of $3,500, compared to the $4,500 median for Manhattan as a whole, according to UrbanDigs data. For sales in the second quarter of 2024, West Harlem’s median price was $1 million, while Manhattan clocked in at $1.68 million, per UrbanDigs.
With cheaper housing, however, comes the threat of gentrification, so the development of life sciences runs the risk of favoring new talent over its pre-existing community. Some Harlem residents have spoken out against Columbia’s West Harlem expansion. According to the Community Service Society, the Black population in Community District 9, which includes West Harlem, decreased by 14 percent between 2010 and 2020, while Latino residents dropped off by 10 percent during that same time frame.
Yet Janet Rodriguez, founder and CEO of cultural nonprofit SoHarlem — located inside the Mink building — believes enough science nonprofits are working with young people to prioritize the interests of Harlem’s communities. These nonprofits are making science entities “understand that they have an obligation to be part of this community beyond just renting space,” she said. “Are they cultivating graduates that live in the neighborhood that are qualified for those jobs? Will they have a workforce training component?”
Many of these efforts have already materialized in Harlem. Fassberg runs a citywide student program called “Science Day,” with plans for an October stint at Metzner’s Taystee Building. Similarly, Brown helps operate a student outreach program at Harlem’s Park East High School, as well as at the South Bronx’s Atmosphere Academy.
“It’s very important that if we build a biotech center in Harlem that it is not going to push out residents,” said Brown. Ideally, a biotech company “also services the community by both providing jobs to the people there and inspiring the people in that community to train or work in the area of biotech.”
As Harlem balances life sciences development with community interests, the city is also looking to draw a scientific workforce. Attracting residents isn’t just about jobs or housing, but about the neighborhood at large, emphasizing the importance of local businesses.
Both new and long-standing eateries, for instance, already pepper Harlem, from 1988 African restaurant Massaw to the student-filled Plowshares. However, there’s room for further growth, said Curtis Archer, president of Harlem Community Development Corporation. “With restaurants, shopping opportunities — all those things there, near an Institute of Higher Learning, really just only enhances the possibilities and enhances the culture of a community,” said Archer.
These social facets of the neighborhood present a chicken-and-egg situation; ancillary businesses not only attract and sustain a workforce, but also, in turn, receive support from that workforce that allows them to remain in operation. People want to live and work in vibrant neighborhoods, said English, yet Harlem has a stigma it’s still trying to shake.
“People need to just realize that [Harlem’s] not that far,” said Fassberg, “It’s not dangerous. It’s a beautiful place, and there are beautiful people just like everywhere else in the city.”
