Malls to Labs: Leading Edge of an Emerging CRE Trend?

Life sciences office space is a growing industry while retail malls are reeling, and a new acquisition by a real estate investment trust (REIT) is a daily double for retail investors following and reacting to those trends. The Boston Globe says Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE: ARE) is working on a deal to buy an aging mall in an area that’s a hotspot for Beantown’s exploding life sciences market for commercial real estate. Watertown Mall is across the street from another former mall, the Arsenal Mall, that’s being converted into a seven-building complex covering 1 million square feet of mixed-use space in the Boston suburb that gave it its name, the Globe article says.