| 
With the recent opening of its new Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab in Allston, Harvard University has taken another major step toward transforming the old WGBH headquarters on Western Avenue into a mini “innovation campus” for its faculty, students, alumni and others.
The Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab – named after the facility’s main benefactor, Stephen Pagliuca, the Bain Capital executive and co-owner of the Boston Celtics – opened earlier this month amid hopes and expectations that it can help early-stage firms to validate and replicate biotech, pharma and other life sciences-related concepts, and evolve into full-fledged research and development operations.
“We’re trying to get them to the next level,” said Jodi Goldstein, managing director of the Harvard Innovation Labs, which will oversee the 15,000-square-foot, shared-space facility.
The $15 million lab, which was built by lead contractor Shawmut Design and Construction and designed by architecture firm Shepley Bulfinch, will eventually house up to 30 firms working on 36 available wet-lab benches within the 2-story structure. The facility has already signed up 17 ventures that have raised a combined $17 million in venture capital and early seed funding.
The turnkey lab, which will provide firms with all the equipment, compliance services and permits they need to get their research up and running, will be managed by LabCentral Inc., a leader in running shared-space lab facilities.
Though there are other shared lab spaces in the Boston area and elsewhere across the country, what makes the new Allston facility unique is that it’s exclusively reserved for Harvard faculty members, students, alumni and post-doctoral scientists, as the university in general aggressively pushes its life sciences research, education and commercial ventures.
What makes it rarer still is that the lab will draw researchers from across a number of disciplines and schools at Harvard, which is known for its sometimes fiercely independent schools run like separate fiefdoms.
The new lab was constructed on a parking lot at the old WGBH headquarters complex in about a year, an astonishingly short period of time partly achieved by the use of cutting-edge modular and prefabricated components that are becoming commonplace throughout the construction industry.
Making Meaningful Work Possible
The Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab is the university’s latest venture at the former WGBH headquarters on Western Avenue in Allston.
Located at 127 Western Ave., it’s just the latest Harvard venture at the former WGBH property.
Five years ago, the university opened its 30,000-square-foot i-Labs at 125 Western Ave., a facility aimed at helping Harvard students get their entrepreneurial tech dreams off the ground. The 8,500-square-foot Launch Labs, aimed at helping Harvard alumni start commercial ventures, later opened at 114 Western Ave.
“I’m starting to call it an ‘innovation campus,’” said Goldstein, whose outfit is charged with promoting innovation and commercialization of ideas across Harvard’s 12 schools. “We’re really excited about it.”
Shawmut Design and Construction has built research labs over the years for private companies and universities, including Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Yale and Brown.
In some respects, construction of the Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab was “pretty straightforward,” said Kevin Sullivan, a Shawmut vice president. But some of the prefabricated components, such as walls with highly intricate and sensitive electrical and plumbing systems attached in advance, were assembled at a factory in Pennsylvania and then shipped to Boston.
Oneil Phatak, senior project manager at Shawmut, said the planning needed to make everything work was “pretty intense” and “required 100 percent coordination at all times.”
In the end, it worked, allowing the facility to be built on time and on budget – and ready for this month’s opening ceremony attended by Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust, Stephen Pagliuca and others.
As impressed as he was by the array of dignitaries at the recent opening ceremony, Shawmut’s Sullivan said he was particularly struck by hearing some of the scientists talk about the cutting-edge life-science research they plan to conduct at the new facility.
“It’s such meaningful work,” said Sullivan, adding he was “awed” by the knowledge of what might be achieved at the new lab.
Email: jayfitzmedia@gmail.com
