A new 300,000 square-foot commercial lab space in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood will help grow some of the startups that get spun out of the University of Chicago.

Hyde Park Labs, at 5207 S. Harper Ave. north and east of the University of Chicago campus, opened about two and a half months ago — but the grand opening was set for Tuesday.

Real estate developer Beacon Capital Partners, which developed the facility along with developer Trammell Crow Company, noted that Hyde Park Labs is the first commercial, purpose-built advanced research and development lab building on the South Side.

The Hyde Park Labs building stands 14 stories tall and spans more than 300,000 square feet. It features nine floors of Class-A lab and office space, a fifth-floor terrace known as The Lawn, and a STEM engagement center for young people known as the Southside STEM Station, Beacon Capital noted.

About 55,000 square feet in the facility was pre-leased for the University of Chicago Science Incubator — a partnership between the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Portal Innovations. The space will help grow a variety of science and technology startups that got their start at UChicago.

"It really began with a groundswell of research activity on the campus of the University of Chicago, and so much of, you know, building a drug from the professor's glimmer in his eye, from the bench in the laboratory in the university — but then where it goes after that, there was really no place to do that near campus," said Portal Innovations chief executive officer and founder John Flavin. "So Hyde Park Labs represents really a revolutionary next step in that process."

Samir Mayekar, former deputy mayor of Chicago, is now managing director for the Polsky Center — which he described as "the startup factory at the University of Chicago." The Polsky Center helps create 30 to 50 new businesses a year in a wide range of industries, Mayekar said.

At the UChicago Science Incubator at Hyde Park Labs, Mayekar explained that the Polsky Center helps pipeline companies that are founded out of the U of C, and invites them to come and take some space at the science incubator lab. The companies work in a variety of STEM disciplines — life sciences, physical sciences, quantum — and they all need actual lab space rather than just a traditional coworking space.

Mayekar himself started a battery materials company called Nanograph Technologies as a grad student — with a mission to make batteries charge faster and last longer. Back then, there was nothing like the UChicago Science Incubator at Hyde Park Labs.

"When we first got out of school, there was nowhere to go to build the company," he said, "and that's why spaces like this are so important, because you can walk to campus and use the facilities, you can get interns from campus, go to your professor's lab. And having that ecosystem be right here on the South Side is so powerful, especially given that 10 minutes from here, you have a multimillion-dollar quantum campus being built."

The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park is coming to the long-vacant U.S. Steel South Works site on the lakefront a few miles south of the U of C and Hyde Park Labs. The quantum campus, to be built by PsiQuantum, is set to be home to the world's first commercially useful quantum computer.

Among the startups at the UChicago Science Incubator at Hyde Park Labs is memQ — a quantum technology company with a mission not to build quantum computers, but to determine how to network quantum computers at a data center scale. memQ's research requires a lot of resources that in turn require lab space.

"Getting access to those specialized resources like lab space, special equipment, is super-important for these like early-stage companies like us," said Sullivan.

CBRE is the leasing agent for Hyde Park Labs. CBRE executive vice president Dan Lyne emphasized how the new UChicago startup facility factors into a long and rich history of cutting-edge scientific research at the University of Chicago.

"The University of Chicago and Hyde Park in general have such a rich, deep history supporting innovation and research. This is where we measured glucose in blood for the first time; bedrock work in measuring the speed of light, which led to Einstein's relativity theory — that all happened down here," he said. "What we're doing here in Hyde Park at Hyde Park Labs is trying to stoke that fire some more, and add on top of it with new sciences — quantum, and AI inside of biotechnology; to try to bring new research to life."

Lyne also emphasized how the research that scientists are conducting at the lab space will change lives.

"We not so jokingly say scientists are people too, right? It's very important. They're working 25/7, and many of them have focused their entire career on solving neurodegenerative diseases — many of your viewers maybe have family members who have had Alzheimer's or Parkinson's," he said. "These have massive real-world impacts. And so the people that are working inside of these spaces need that equipment. They need that capital to propel that research; to actually make lives better."

Hyde Park Labs is a cornerstone in the second phase of the redevelopment of Harper Court, at 53rd Street and Lake Park Avenue. 

The first Harper Court opened in 1965 and was originally made up largely of arts and music-related businesses. In the 1990s and 2000s, it was known in particular for Dr. Wax Records, the Toys Et Cetera toy store, Calypso Café Restaurant, and Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop — a favorite of former President Barack Obama when he lived in the area.

The buildings that housed those businesses were cleared away in the early 2010s in favor of a cluster of taller and denser buildings — including a 12-story 225,000 square-foot mixed-use building housing University of Chicago offices, retail, and parking, and a separate building housing a Hyatt Place hotel.