Since its founding, TransMedics has grown into a publicly-traded company worth more than $4.7 billion. And now, the Andover-based firm has finalized plans to move its headquarters to Somerville, leasing a vacant lab building just outside Assembly Row and planning to hire for at least 600 new positions by 2032.
The nearly 500,000-square-foot lease at 188 Assembly Park Drive is the largest lab deal in Somerville’s history, and the second-largest lab lease in Greater Boston in the past 12 months, following Biogen’s new headquarters in Kendall Square.
Beyond leasing the lab, TransMedics has also bought 5 acres of land next door from BioMed Realty for $30 million. BioMed had planned to develop two additional lab buildings — up to 1 million square feet — on that land, said Colleen O’Connor, the developer’s executive vice president and East Coast market lead.
The lab and adjacent property gives TransMedics ample room to keep growing, Hassanein said.
“There’s more growth opportunities in front of us, and we want to make sure that we have at least secured our growth and location, rather than worrying about it in the future,” he said. “We want to be in that area for a very long time.”
The headquarters move is accompanied by a $36 million tax incentive package from both Somerville and the Commonwealth. Somerville in October agreed to give Transmedics $18 million worth of property tax breaks over 10 years, while the state has proposed a matching $18 million package through the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. The incentives require TransMedics to hire 600 new jobs, have 900 at the headquarters by 2032, and include clawbacks if it doesn’t meet the hiring goals.
“Massachusetts is a global leader in life sciences because of the investments we make in life-saving, innovative companies like TransMedics,” Governor Maura Healey said in statement. “Their expansion into Somerville is a powerful example of how cutting-edge medical innovation and economic growth go hand in hand.”
The deal follows a pitch for a “very creative tax package” by New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte for TransMedics to relocate from Andover to neighboring Salem, N.H., Hassanein said. North Carolina officials were also actively recruiting, he said.
While New Hampshire’s pitch of building a new lab campus exactly to TransMedics’ standards was compelling, that construction process would have taken at least three years — time Hassanein said TransMedics doesn’t have. Going with an already developed building means the company can start moving in as early as the end of this year.
“For us, we could not wait three years. We’re dealing with some exponential growth,” he said.
All 300 employees at TransMedics’ existing campus in Andover will have the chance to come into Somerville — and the company will work with them to find other positions if they’re not interested in relocating. Hassanein is also exploring relocating the headquarters of TransMedics’ aviation unit from Bozeman, Montana, to Massachusetts, and has met with the Massachusetts Port Authority to pitch the move, he said.
Organ transplantation has historically been a decentralized, regional practice, said Brian Johnson, president of state medical device trade association MassMEDIC. TransMedics, meanwhile, combines both advanced manufacturing and medical device technology with a national logistics network; the company maintains its own fleet of airplanes that it uses solely for transporting organs.
“You can have a donor in California and get it to a recipient in Massachusetts — used to be no way you could do that,” Johnson said. “If we make this move now, and we’re partners with them, we’re taking ownership of a whole new industry that combines aerospace and advanced machine learning and regenerative medicine.”
Bringing 900 jobs to Somerville in fields ranging from manufacturing, research and development, administration, and youth internships — not to mention filling a hole in Somerville’s lab market — is a huge win, said newly elected Mayor Jake Wilson. Somerville officials expect the 10-year, $18 million tax increment financing package to generate $75 million in new revenue for the city.
“This is going to open doors for our residents across a wide range of career paths and entry levels, from manufacturing to research to tech and administration,” Wilson said. “This is really just the start.”
Catherine Carlock can be reached at catherine.carlock@globe.com. Follow her @bycathcarlock.
