While many life sciences projects across Greater Boston have pivoted or remained stalled for years, DivcoWest is advancing plans for a lab development in one of the most distressed submarkets in the region.

The Somerville Planning Board on Thursday night voted unanimously in favor of the site plan for DivcoWest's 120-132 Middlesex Ave. lab development near Assembly Row.

The approval effectively revives the project, for which the developer had received a two-year extension in 2024 due to slow leasing in the area. Rather than apply for another extension, DivcoWest decided to advance the project.

Representatives of the development team met with the Somerville Planning Board on Aug. 20 and detailed why they still envision the lab building proposal as the future for the site, the Cambridge Somerville Independent reported. They said the developer doesn't plan to break ground speculatively, but they think having entitlements in place will help land a big tenant that could kick-start construction.

“Things may appear slow on the surface,” DivcoWest Senior Director Nicole LaBossiere said during the August presentation, according to the CS Independent. “Having an approved project to offer will allow us to compete in what is truly a competitive environment.”

DivcoWest, a San Francisco-based real estate investor with $17B in assets under management, owns at least a dozen properties in the Boston area, according to its website.

The firm, under its entity DWCH Assembly Row LLC, acquired two sites on Middlesex Avenue and Cummings Street for a combined $24M in 2021. The developer won planning board approval for the development, then known as Brickyard at Assembly, in 2020.

The project encompasses 607K SF of life sciences space and 555 below-grade parking spaces across an approximately 1-acre site.

Lab development has slowed dramatically in Greater Boston since the once-soaring life sciences market fell back to earth in 2023.

As of the second quarter of 2026, four projects totaling 2.1M SF of labs were under construction, but they were 100% preleased, according to CBRE. Availability across the market has risen to 32.8%, with the northern suburbs, including Somerville, seeing availability over 50%.

"I'm still concerned we have too much lab space," Planning Board Member Lynn Richards said in August. "The last thing I want to see happen is that we got this building that is sitting vacant, and then now the city needs to make a deal and provide all sorts of tax incentives to get a tenant in there."

The DivcoWest team still envisions the project as lab space, but there could be a hybrid development with a lab/office split closer to 60-40.

“We are monitoring the market on a daily basis,” LaBossiere said, according to the CS Independent. “We’re at the point where we need the fully entitled building to articulate what we have available, and to be able to have those discussions with various types of tenants … to be able to move or pivot quickly.”

At Thursday night's planning board meeting, the only comments made about the project concerned energy use intensity and what it could mean for the proposed building if DivcoWest changes it from a lab to another use.

"It would be detrimental to your pro forma but also, on an operational level, a huge waste of energy to be running that type of system," Planning Board Member Amelia Aboff said. "I do hope that as you look at prospective tenants, you're considering how to tamp down those high-powered engineering choices."

LaBossiere replied that whatever the outcome of the project, efficiency would be "the highest priority and will remain so."

The developer isn't the only one with a stalled lab project in Somerville. Federal Realty Investment Trust also delayed its 350 Assembly Row lab project in 2024, citing concerns with "oversaturation" in the market. Leggat McCall Properties and DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners paused construction of its 262K SF 15 McGrath Highway project in July 2024.

Developers that have completed projects in the area are still feeling pain. Greystar's 74M lab project, located at 74 Middlesex Ave., hasn't announced any commitments since the building opened in 2024. 

The leasing slowdown, specifically in Somerville, had been so drastic that city officials stepped in and offered an $18M tax break to Andover organ transplant firm Transmedics to occupy 498K SF at BioMed Realty's 188 Assembly Park Drive.

It didn't come without a price. Transmedics received nearly two years of free rent to relocate.