In Conversation w/ Joe Colletti, Executive Vice President, JLL, @ Philly Builds Bio+ 3rd Annual Symposium

Joe Colletti, an Executive Vice President at JLL, specializes in portfolio and transaction management for companies with significant real estate holdings, focusing on life sciences and providing comprehensive, tenant-focused real estate solutions. With over 10 years of experience and a track record of completing 250+ transactions for major clients like GSK and DuPont, Joe serves as a single point of contact coordinating services across the JLL platform.

December 5, 2024

This article is part of our In Conversation series, one of our ongoing People & Places Features. Go indepth with some of the most interesting people making impact across BioBuzz’s growing biohubs.

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Chris Frew [00:00:05]:

Welcome. My name is Chris Frew, CEO of BioBuzz Networks. We’re here today in Philadelphia at the third annual Philly Builds Bio Life Science Symposium, where hundreds of attendees have gathered along with dozens of speakers to talk about innovation in the life science space, but more specifically, the exciting things happening here in Philadelphia. I’m very excited today to be joined by Joe Coletti. Joe, welcome.

Joe Colletti [00:00:29]:

Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me.

Chris Frew [00:00:30]:

My pleasure. Do you mind taking a quick second just to introduce yourself?

Joe Colletti [00:00:33]:

Yeah, sure. So, Joe Colletti. I’m with JLL out of the Philadelphia office. JLL is a Fortune 500 commercial real estate services firm. I’ve been here for 15 years, working primarily with life sciences and pharma companies. We started working on life sciences companies before life science was kind of a buzzword with the big institutions, the GSK chops of the world. And more recently, we’ve been doing a lot of work with the upstart biotech and the cell and gene therapy community. And really exciting time in the market. Obviously, it’s a little down right now, but we fully anticipate and have a lot of confidence that the market’s going to bounce back in a big way.

Chris Frew [00:01:13]:

That’s great. It seems that that was part of the conversation that we’ve had here throughout the day. This is the third annual event. I’d love to hear your take on kind of the day’s events and why it’s important for you and JL to.

Joe Colletti [00:01:28]:

Be part of it. Yeah. I think if you look at the event, this jll, what’s a commercial real estate services firm doing an event like this? Obviously, we work with these companies who are, what, I’ll say, the star attraction. Right. We’re here just to support them in their growth and their ecosystem. I think events like this are super important because you bring all the aspects of the ecosystem together. I was really excited to see a panel on incubators. They’re all competitors, but they’re kind of talking and collaborating. You talk about the talent development that’s going on in Philadelphia. These are things that probably weren’t in place, you know, two years ago, three years ago, especially not four or five years ago. So to kind of see this infrastructure here to support the companies and their growth, to me, is really, really exciting.

Chris Frew [00:02:18]:

That’s great. I’ve heard the term infrastructure used quite a bit as a core element to an ecosystem or a hub. How do you define. When you talk to people about the Philly ecosystem, what are those infrastructure elements that really kind of stand out?

Joe Colletti [00:02:35]:

Yeah, I Think when you talk Philadelphia, you always have to go back to the mainstays. Right. You have the pens of the world, you have the traps of the world, you have big pharmacy. Basically every big pharma kind of in the US is kind of within a 45 minute drive of here. So you’ve always had the talent. I think what’s changed or the infrastructure piece is definitely talent. Over the past four, five years you’ve seen an influx of incubation space which we never had before. We had limited incubators, but now we have four or five and they’re basically full. And that’s a great place for these upstart biotechs to start. And now with my real estate hat on, we have buildings being built on spec that have never really been done in Philadelphia. Obviously it’s a tough time in the real estate market. We have some vacancy, but when you look across the US there’s vacancy everywhere. And I would say Philadelphia is built to a scale that can be absorbed over a short period of time. And I fully anticipate that. Is it going to be two years? It’s going to be five years, tbd. But I don’t think these buildings are going to be sitting vacant for a long time.

Chris Frew [00:03:42]:

So Philadelphia has the bench of assets, it sounds like in your mind, that is able to get and fill up the capacity of lab space that’s out there.

Joe Colletti [00:03:51]:

Yeah. I mean even just looking at the University of Pennsylvania and what they’ve done, they’re a major institution anywhere you look. But having them in our backyard, you know, all the, I think I read, I think 12% of the cell and gene therapy companies are based in Philadelphia. So that alone gives me a lot of optimism of things to come. If you look at the growth, obviously Spark is kind of the shining star. The growth. They had one company, you know, probably upwards of a million square feet occupied. So if we have a handful of companies with half the success they had, that’s going to be, you know, very good things for the market overall. And you know, success breeds success. So, you know, as companies, you know, start to do well, I mean we had Iovance getting approval, we had adaptimmune get an approval. Right. So things are still happening. We just haven’t seen kind of the catalyst moment of space being taken down because of the interest rate, environment because of VC funding drying up. And then obviously it’s an election year, but we’re starting to see signs of movement, fully expect things to pick up by year end and then heading into 25 more movement.

Chris Frew [00:04:58]:

That’s great to hear that there’s some things picking up. JL is a large firm but you’re in here in Philadelphia. What are some of the things that you hear from companies are really attractive about labs space in Philadelphia, you know. You know, in comparison to other markets.

Joe Colletti [00:05:14]:

Yeah. So I’m part of our, the JLL National Life Science Advisory Council. Basically we meet once a month with other brokers and other major life sciences markets to kind of share best practices what’s going on in other markets. So I think what, what we have going on in Philly in terms of development in the vacancy is not specific to Philly. It’s. It’s going on in every market across the U.S. i think Philadelphia, like I said, the cell and gene therapy expertise in this market, Penn here we literally have everyone uses rockstar scientists but we have The Carl Junz, Dr. Wilson, Kathy Heise of the world in our backyard along with the MRNA technology, Nobel Peace Prize winners. All that knowledge base is right here and I think that’s going to attract people to come here. And just being legacy pharma, the built in talent base that’s here, the infrastructure and the ability for a company to thrive here I think is better than some other markets. So I think that’s going to start attracting people here.

Chris Frew [00:06:20]:

Talent is always something that comes up. How important is that when you’re talking to an owner or company who’s looking to relocate or to grow somewhere?

Joe Colletti [00:06:30]:

Yeah, I think when we’re talking with companies about Philadelphia. Yes. You know, people talk about the real estate costs and whatnot versus other markets. But you know, to me you’re, you’re not selling the real estate, you’re selling the overall region you’re selling. We have great schools, we have great communities, you have great pharma companies that have been here. Those are going to feed your upstart biotech down the road. For folks who’ve been at Merck for 20 years and want to go try something else. So I think kind of selling the region as a whole versus you know, yes, it’s compelling. Our real estate cost is less than Boston or San Fran, but that shouldn’t be the reason you’re coming here. The built in reason is because of the talent, because of the upends of the world. Because sparks done in here, you can do it here. Right. So I just think the overall infrastructure and Philadelphia region is the driving force as opposed to just cost.

Chris Frew [00:07:19]:

Yeah, that’s a great, great point. It’s the ecosystem they’re buying into and all the elements that come into that.

Joe Colletti [00:07:24]:

Right.

Chris Frew [00:07:25]:

And we’ve, we’ve had you mentioned too Ivance and adapt immune really good success stories over the past year. Also had some, a handful of eight or ten pretty decent investments come into the space which I think is probably more than some of the other regions as well.

Joe Colletti [00:07:43]:

Yeah, I mean obviously that’s a, it’s a good side. It’s not to the, to the levels. It was kind of the post Covid boom where you know you are seeing almost once a week, hey series A B, $50 million, you know, kind of went away for 12 to 18 months. But it’s great to see data points of companies getting funded and I’d say not only funded but pretty big numbers that are coming out. So yes, that’s obviously exciting and with the rate cuts coming and the interest rate environment, you know, trending downwards, we fully expect VCs who’ve had, you know, cash on the sidelines to come back into the market. So you know, again we’re excited about you know, what’s, what’s to come over the next 6, 12, 24 months.

Chris Frew [00:08:25]:

You also had a cluster report come out recently. Any insights coming out of that that you can share?

Joe Colletti [00:08:30]:

Yeah, I think so. JLL just released their national clusters report. Kind of tracks the top 10 markets. Philly came in at number eight this year. We’ve been as high as number four. Everyone loves rankings but you know, we are where we are. I think you know, the big things that we see, like I said previously, you know what’s happening in Philly, we’re seeing, you know, on the same sorts of things happening in the Boston’s, the San Frans of the world. I think in Philly we just, we don’t have as much vacancy, as much, you know, of a subly space as the Boston or San Francisco because of the size of our market which I think actually shields us, you know, long term because there’s potential quicker time to recovery. So yeah, that’s a, that’s a report. Happy to share it with you. So you know, people want to see it.

Chris Frew [00:09:18]:

I love the comparison too. That and just the perspective that you bring that in comparison, you know, things have been tough but a little less tough here and everyone’s going through it because yeah, everyone’s going through a lot of the same thing. But the infrastructure, the culture, the assets. There’s a lot that Philly brings that is, you know, a very, it brings a lot of hope and a bullish outlook to what the future holds.

Joe Colletti [00:09:42]:

Absolutely.

Chris Frew [00:09:43]:

Well, thank you very much for joining us today. I really appreciate the conversation and the insights and for all your support being part of today’s event.

Joe Colletti [00:09:50]:

Yeah, I appreciate it, really. Thanks for having me, guys, and look forward to hopefully connecting again in the future.

Chris Frew [00:09:55]:

Wonderful. My name is Chris Frew. I’m the CEO of BioBuzz Networks. We’re recording today live at Philly Builds Bio third annual Symposium.

Joe Colletti [00:10:03]:

Thank you for joining me.