A pharmaceutical giant is doubling down on its longtime base in Southern California with plans for a new research and development facility near Los Angeles.
Amgen plans to break ground in the third quarter on a $600 million science and innovation center in its hometown of Thousand Oaks in suburban Ventura County, California.
The firm is the latest to ramp up research and production facilities in the United States to avoid future effects of import tariffs, putting recovery in view for a real estate category that has struggled in the post-pandemic era.
The company, maker of best-selling drugs like autoimmune disease treatment Enbrel and osteoporosis medicine Prolia, owns almost 2 million square feet of biotech space clustered in the leafy Conejo Valley about 40 miles west of downtown Los Angeles.
The new Thousand Oaks facility will put Amgen researchers, engineers and scientists under one roof with the “tools and collaborative environment they need to shape the next era of scientific discovery,” but will not manufacture drugs, according to a statement from Robert A. Bradway, the firm’s chairman and chief executive officer.
The U.S. life sciences real estate market is experiencing a surge in activity as pharmaceutical companies respond to tariffs and supply chain pressures in part by bringing manufacturing back to American soil.
Fifteen major drugmakers have announced more than $270 billion in U.S. projects this year alone, a 185% jump in biomanufacturing demand, according to JLL. Brokers say the shift is fueling one of the fastest expansions of biotech facilities in decades, even as developers contend with infrastructure and labor constraints.
Alexandria Real Estate Equities, the country’s biggest biotech landlord, added more than half a million square feet of lab space in the first half of the year, with another 1.1 million square feet on the way that’s already mostly spoken for as demand for biotech space rebounds.
In addition to new research facilities, Amgen is bulking up its U.S. production capacity with a $900 million expansion of its Columbus, Ohio, area manufacturing facility. In December, the drugmaker said it would spend $1 billion to build a second drug substance plant in Holly Springs, North Carolina.
Meanwhile, federal agencies are working to streamline the development of drug manufacturing sites in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration in August introduced a program to ease the approval process for these facilities.
The White House has said these efforts will help cut construction timelines; at the moment, some of these buildings take 10 years to put up. Such efforts aim to reduce reliance on foreign pharmaceutical manufacturing and strengthen the domestic drug supply chain.