BOSTON—JLL's latest addition to its life sciences team here believes that if the Pfizer-Allergan merger is approved, the deal may in fact be beneficial to the Cambridge area market.

JLL executive vice president Matthew Powers tells Globest.com that Pfizer signed a phase one lease with MIT Real Estate at 610 Main St. South several years ago for 180,000 square feet of space and this past summer inked a 500,000-square-foot lease at the two building 610 Main St. complex in Cambridge as part of a space consolidation initiative in Cambridge.

"Given their emphasis on elucidating and exploiting the scientific innovation that exists in Cambridge, I would expect the Pfizer/Allergan merger to yield an even greater migration to Cambridge," Powers predicts.

Powers recently joined JLL to co-lead its New England life sciences practice. Powers comes to JLL from Merck Millipore of Billercia, MA, bringing 20 years of strategic real estate experience in the life sciences arena. In his previous position as head of real estate and infrastructure operations/strategy program manager in Merck Millipore's biosciences division, he was responsible for the firm's global real estate portfolio of 6 million square feet across 41 locations worldwide. He led the company's real estate strategy and transaction management for the North America-West Coast and Massachusetts campuses. Early in his career he worked for noted biotech firms Genzyme and the Genetics Institute. Later he worked with Wyeth and founded Chimera Management & Research Institute.

Powers joins JLL executive vice president Don Domoretsky on the life sciences team that has successfully implemented real estate strategies for firms, real estate owners and institutions including: Conagen, Genocea Bioscience, GlaxoSmithKline, Moderna Therapeutics, QinetiQ | North America, Novartis, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Charles Stark-Draper Laboratories, Tufts University, Shire, Dyax, Charles River Labs, and Related Beal.

"We continue to grow market share and add top talent across our group and the firm," states JLL managing director and leader of New England brokerage Bill Barrack. "Matt's real estate expertise and skills set in consulting, transaction management, lease negotiation, site selection and market analysis in life sciences will make an even stronger presence for us throughout the region's core lab markets."

Powers tells Globest.com that JLL will look to grow its life sciences team both externally and internally. He says that the company will look to coalesce some existing JLL personnel who have been working on life science transactions in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere. He adds that the company will also be looking to hire two additional brokers in Boston in the short term to add to its New England life sciences team as well.

While his primary role will be in overseeing the life sciences team in New England, Power says that he will also be supporting life science-relted initiatives in New York/New Jersey, as well as on the West Coast, including the San Diego and San Francisco markets.

He adds that at present there are not specific life science teams in its other major markets outside of New England and part of his role will help integrate some of those operations internally in order to establish perhaps the life sciences sector a national platform within the brokerage firm. Powers adds that in the next 12 to 18 months JLL will assess its other biotech markets across the country and then make strategic decisions on where to add resources.

Powers, who has been in the real estate business for more than 20 years, says he has experienced about four different major economic cycles during that time. In discussing the Boston-Cambridge biotech-bio-pharmaceutical market at present he says, "There has been a lot of talk recently of a bubble. I really don't think there is. The Boston-Cambridge cluster is so strong and will continue to strengthen."

He notes that the Greater Boston-Cambridge market possesses the variables such as the educational institutions such as Harvard, MIT, etc., as well as the health care institutions that make up a strong biotech market. Powers say that the region also boasts the innovators and forward thinkers like Mark Levin of Third Rock Ventures, BioMed Realty and Alexandria Real Estate Equities "that really get and understand all the different systems that impact this cluster."

Powers, a resident of Charlestown, MA, concludes that there is one other major variable that sets the Boston-Cambridge market apart from other locations that will continue to draw companies and workers to the marketplace for some time to come and will likely prevent any bubble from affecting the region any time soon.

"The Holy Grail in this industry no matter what is scientific innovation and if there is one thing that we have in spades in the Boston-Cambridge market is scientific innovation… I think this market is going to continue to strengthen and that is why we are looking to hire more people and invest in growing these opportunities for JLL."