With new owners, Medicago building to become life sciences hub
Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
peterblack@qctonline.com
Quebec City’s notorious “white elephant” of a building is getting a new lease on life.
The giant, brand-new Medicago plant in the Beauport sector has been sold and its new owners plan to transform it into a life sciences industry hub. Under a deal signed in early November, a partnership involving Hugues Harvey, president of real estate specialist HarveyCorp, and Marc Lebel, founder of Anapharm, bought the building for $17.5 million.
In an interview with the QCT, Harvey said the plan is to convert the 700,000 square-foot building into a laboratory space for various companies along the lines of several facilities in Montreal.
Harvey said when the Medicago building came up for sale, it was an obvious opportunity for his company. “When an asset like that comes on the market, most of the time we are the first company brokers are calling to offer the buildings.”
The building became avail- able last year in the wake of Medicago’s failure to capitalize on the race to develop and produce a COVID-19 vaccine.
The company, owned by Japanese pharmaceutical giant Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, managed to develop an effective plant-based vaccine and had a multi-million dollar supply contract with the Canadian government. The World Health Organization refused to approve the vaccine, however, because of the stake tobacco company Philip Morris had in the project.
Mitsubishi subsequently folded Medicago, a company founded by Quebec researchers, leaving questions about the fate of large government investments in vaccine research and manufacturing.
According to a news release from the new owners, the goal of the project is “to house private companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical technology fields, in addition to incubators and non-profit health organizations. Discussions are well underway with several companies that have expressed strong interest in establishing themselves in this new hub.”
Harvey said he can’t disclose which companies are interested but “they are all very happy” about the prospect of being involved in such a cluster of enterprises in the biomedical industry.
He said some parts of the building may already be suitable to welcome tenants, but an examination will be done with architects to determine what conversions for laboratories, cleanrooms and office and industrial spaces will be required.
According to the release, “redevelopment work will begin in early 2025, with the first tenants expected to move into the hub starting in 2026.” Harvey said he expects the creation of the life science hub to unfold over the next five to seven years and create the same kind of synergy as similar clusters in the Montreal area.
The price the partners paid is well below the $47-million current city evaluation of the property. The city had sold the land to Medicago in 2015 for $4.6 million. The cost of building the vaccine facility is estimated at $245 million. Construction started in 2018 and was nearing completion as the pandemic hit and the race was on to develop and produce vaccines.
Harvey said that while no level of government was involved in the purchase of the building, discussions are underway with the provincial and municipal governments about financial assistance.
On that score, Mayor Bruno Marchand issued a statement saying, “I am pleased that the efforts of recent years are bearing fruit. The city will actively support the investments needed to revive activities and stimulate this sector of the city.”
The city councillor for the area, Isabelle Roy, said in an email to the QCT, “This is exciting news! I am pleased by this acquisition by Quebec entrepreneurs, which will allow Quebec to position itself as a hub of excellence in biomedi- cal research and innovation – an asset we can be particularly proud of.”
Roy said she was going to meet with Harvey and Lebel this week “to learn more about their project and the development prospects for the sector. They can, of course, count on my full collaboration.”
Harvey’s company, according to the release, “has developed extensive expertise in building and converting properties into laboratory spaces dedicated to life sciences, with over 500,000 square feet of projects com- pleted since 2019 in this field, valued at over $200 million.”
Lebel founded Quebec City- based Anapharm, a contract scientific research and clinical trials company, in 1994. It has
1,200 employees and sales of $150 million with locations in Quebec City; Trois-Rivières; Montreal; Toronto; Princeton, New Jersey; and Barcelona, Spain.
The partners say the deal also involves other private investors, including François Laflamme, founder of OmegaChem in Lévis. The building is now being called the 2300 D’Estimauville Megacomplex.