Tampa is an emerging life sciences market
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Aug 11, 2023

Tampa is once again considered an emerging life sciences cluster by CBRE Group Inc., which has released its ranking of U.S. markets by their pool of life sciences talent.

Tampa had the fourth-fastest growth rate of life sciences graduates from 2016 to 2021, according to CBRE. The city ranks No. 13 among U.S. markets with biological and biomedical science graduates.

Tampa also ranked fourth among emerging life sciences hubs in National Institutes of Health funding with $179 million, behind Columbus ($306 million), Cincinnati ($262 million) and Indianapolis ($240 million).

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area also saw its number of life sciences graduates increase significantly in the same five-year span, CBRE said. The top three metros for growth in life sciences graduates were Phoenix, Riverside/San Bernardino, California and Houston.

“Demand for life sciences research workers is above pre-pandemic levels,” Matt Gardner, CBRE advisory services life sciences leader, said in a statement. “We’re also seeing a closely balanced ratio of hiring to job cuts in the biopharma industry compared with the technology sector and the broader economy, which positions the life sciences to remain stable despite an economic downturn.”

Life sciences real estate is rarely built speculatively; it is expensive to build and typically specific to tenants’ needs, especially for wet lab space. Several life-sciences companies have support employees in Tampa, like Pfizer Inc.’s operations hub in The Heights. But lab space, like the facility regenerative medicine company Axogen has in The Heights, is much more rare.

And more is coming: Moffitt Cancer Center’s Speros campus, underway in Pasco, has a vision of drawing world-class researchers and scientists to the region.