The Alexandria Center for Life Science is pushing the envelope in its quest to bring biotechnology and related industries to New York.

The center has two towers overlooking FDR Drive on the East Side — the 310K SF East Tower and the 420K SF West Tower, both of which are nearly fully occupied with pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly and Roche. A year ago, Alexandria Real Estate Equities carved out 15K SF for an incubator called LaunchLabs, and now it has leased about half of that space, Crain's New York reports.

The 13 tenants are startups birthed from local academic institutions like New York University, Columbia and the New York Genome Center, picked from a long list of applicants (due to the dearth of incubator space in the city) for their long-term potential to succeed and to work with the larger tenants in the complex. Alexandria has promised millions of venture capital dollars for worthy tenants.

Alexandria Real Estate is betting adding nascent biotech companies to a tenant mix with established, international firms will help fuel further growth, because the developer is attempting to add height to its proposal for a third tower, originally planned for 420K SF on East 29th St. Negotiations with the city are underway.