Winchester Partners, a joint venture of Twining Properties, L+M Development Partners and the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, has acquired Higher One’s corporate headquarters in New Haven’s Science Park at Yale.
Together, the partners plan to reinventthe building at 115 Munson Street as Winchester Works, which will be designed to meet the needs of office and life sciences tenants ranging from 5,000 to 75,000 square feet.
Work will include an overhaul of the building’s entrance, lobby, and a revamp of the building’s rooftop amenity space.
Completed in 2012, the 145,000 s/f Class A office building was the first new office building constructed in New Haven in more than 20 years.
“Winchester Partners’ vision for a new town center in the old factory where Yale-driven tech companies can live and work is exactly what the State needs to accelerate economic growth,” said David Lehman, CT State Commissioner for Economic Development.
The purchase by Winchester Partners comes as New Haven sees an influx of biotech companies – but a shortage of space to house them.
According to Yale University’s Office of Cooperative Research (OCR) and the Yale Daily News, startups incubated out of Yale raised more than $1 billion through venture capital funding and $11 billion through public market funding in 2018 alone.
But those growing firms often encounter a shortage of lab space to move into, OCR told the Daily News. Winchester Works’ space will be tailored specifically to meet that increasingly pressing need.
Prior to closing, Winchester Partners completed leases with two major tenants at Winchester Works: a 34,000 s/f lease with Bank Mobile, a digital bank, and a 12,000 s/f lease with Transact Campus, a cashless campus technology company, to occupy 40 percent of the building.
The Works is the first stage in the Winchester Center master plan, which could eventually include the four remaining buildings and four development sites in Science Park at Yale.
