AIDS initiative signs first lease at bioscience center

Real Estate Weekly, July 11, 2007

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) has entered into a lease for space with New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and partnered with the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center to become the first tenant at BioBAT, a new 486,000 s/f bioscience center to be housed at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn.

BioBAT is a collaboration between NYCEDC and SUNY Downstate through the SUNY Research Foundation. IAVI plans to develop a world class laboratory focused exclusively on accelerating the development of AIDS vaccines.
Under the terms of the 15-year lease with NYCEDC, the agency that manages BAT on behalf of the City of New York, IAVI will occupy 36,000 s/ f of space and move its AIDS Vaccine Development Laboratory into the new facility in the first quarter of 2008 from a temporary location at the SUNY Downstate campus. The City and the State are providing $54.5 million for the creation of BioBAT, and the City will provide $12.5 million of its portion for the construction of IAVI's space. "IAVI's decision to become a tenant at BioBAT reinforces our commitment to establishing a bioscience center at the Brooklyn Army Terminal," said NYCEDC president Robert C. Lieber.

"BioBAT will provide the bioscience companies at SUNY Downstate space to grow when they have outgrown their incubator space."

"We hope that IAVI's decision to establish its AIDS Vaccine Development Laboratory in Brooklyn will inspire additional bioscience companies to follow suit," said John C. LaRosa, M.D., president of SUNY Downstate.


"Downstate and IAVI have worked "together for the past two years, and today's formal announcement is an acknowledgement of our successful partnership."

Collaborating with a network of laboratories and research partners across the globe, the IAVI Lab aims to populate the vaccine pipeline with new concepts, which elicit multiple, targeted immune responses that demonstrate a measurable improvement over the candidates currently undergoing clinical testing, and therefore hold the potential to provide greater protection from HIV infection.