Nuveen loan to enable building of Amsterdam life science asset
Nuveen Real Estate has provided a €35 million senior secured loan to Breakthrough Properties, a joint venture of Tishman Speyer and Bellco Capital, to finance the acquisition and construction of One Helix, a state-of-the-art life sciences asset in Amsterdam.
The asset is 100% pre-let to Neogene, a global, clinical-stage biotech company pioneering the discovery, development and manufacturing of next-generation engineered T cell receptor (TCR) therapies targeting a broad spectrum of solid cancers, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of AstraZeneca.
“The real estate debt market is still very competitive in the right geographies and sectors, so we are pleased to have partnered with Breakthrough Properties and Tishman Speyer to finance this state-of-the-art life sciences development,” said Caroline Pellmann, senior director, Nuveen Real Estate.
Once complete, One Helix will provide a 5,155 sq m, five-storey, office and laboratory building in the south-east of Amsterdam within the medical cluster surrounding the Amsterdam University Medical Center (Amsterdam UMC). The location has been designated as a key life science development area by the municipality of Amsterdam and is the fastest growing life science cluster in the Netherlands.
The site benefits from an established life science base with an additional 100,000 sq m-plus of land available for high quality life science developments that will establish the park as the dominant life science hub in Amsterdam.
The development has been designed by award winning architect UNStudio to incorporate highest sustainability standards and integration with the Amsterdam UMC’s ambitious ESG goals. It will hold BREEAM “Outstanding” and BENG 2 certificates for sustainability, allowing the facility to be classified as a green loan. The scheme is also designed to support carbon negative operations and will be supplied with geothermal heating and cooling via an aquifer thermal energy storage system and PV panels on the roof to generate electricity.
“Our ongoing collaboration with the Amsterdam University Medical Center and Neogene is emblematic of Breakthrough Properties’ commitment to supporting cutting edge science while also delivering top-quality, sustainable environments,” said Tom Renn, senior vice president for acquisitions and development for Europe, Breakthrough Properties.
The loan is provided by Nuveen’s pan-European debt strategy, the fourth in the European commercial real estate debt series. It represents the second investment for the strategy following an agreement of €54 million to finance three logistics assets in Berlin for Valor. The strategy was launched in 2022 with around €150 million of initial capital secured from several German institutional investors alongside Nuveen’s parent, TIAA and discloses under Article 8 of the SFDR.
Nuveen Real Estate, a Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA) company, is one of the largest investment managers in the world with $149 billion of assets under management.
