4340 Duncan Redevelopment

This redevelopment project transforms an old rotogravure printing plant turned warehouse into adaptable spaces for biotech startup companies. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, so the historic character and building elements will be preserved while the overall space will be modernized and reconfigured for laboratory and office use. The Crescent Building is located in the Cortex Innovation Community, a 200-acre innovation center for bioscience and technology research, development and commercialization in St. Louis’ Central West End and Forest Park Southeast neighborhoods.

HERA is providing schematic lab planning and design for the project, including suggestions on lab layouts and locations. Due to the limited floor-to-floor height of the first floor, most of the laboratory space will be concentrated on the second and third floors. The second floor, with 25 foot ceilings, incorporates shared labs in a greenhouse form. Fixed lab casework, sinks and fume hoods are limited to the perimeter of the labs, which allows for open floor space for specific processes and tenant furnished equipment. The center of the shared lab is intended to be a highly adaptable space, utilizing movable adjustable height lab tables to allow simple transitions from work surface areas to lab equipment zones as the occupants and uses evolve over time.

The current design of the first floor includes tenant offices, conference rooms, share amenities, a loading dock, with adjacent lab support spaces for gas cylinder holding, lab waste holding and shared equipment. The second floor includes a  number of shared lab support spaces for bio labs, decontamination, gas cylinder manifold room, in addition the large shared lab and office/lab suites. The third floor can work as a single tenant or  multiple office/lab suites.