Now under new ownership. Carter Winstanley (center): “We have no defined plan for the 290 Congress site beyond our continued commitment to supporting the existing tenants’ needs for high quality laboratory space within the City of New Haven.” Credit: Thomas Breen file photo One of the c ity’s largest lab-office landlords has purchased the John B. Pierce Laboratory building on Congress Avenue for $5 million. That sale comes as the nonprofit that runs the decades-old Pierce lab works on gifting all of its assets to Yale in exchange for the endowment of five professorships and two graduate fellowships. The property transaction in question was recorded on the city’s land records database on Dec. 4, 2025. A quit-claim deed states that WE 290 Congress Avenue LLC paid $5 million to John B. Pierce Laboratory Inc to acquire 290 Congress Ave., 93 Washington Ave., and 101 Washington Ave. Those properties currently contain a century-old three-story office building and two vacant lots. The city most recently appraised those three properties as worth a combined total of $4,419,900 for tax purposes. The properties’ new owner is a company controlled by the Cambridge, Mass.-based company Winstanley Enterprises, which is also the developer of 100 and 101 College St. and the owner of the nearby Temple Medical Center, among other city properties. Winstanley has a long history of working closely with, and renting lab/office space to, Yale — including at 300 George St., which the university subsequently bought from Winstanley for nearly $140 million in 2023. “We have no defined plan for the 290 Congress site beyond our continued commitment to supporting the existing tenants’ needs for high quality laboratory space within the City of New Haven,” Carter Winstanley told the Independent in an email comment on March 27. Meanwhile, the seller of 290 Congress, 93 Washington, and 101 Washington is an independent lab that closed last year. In August 2024, Pierce lab announced plans to gift all of the lab’s assets to Yale. “While Yale and Pierce have been formally affiliated for almost 60 years, Pierce’s gifts to Yale represent a fundamental change in the direction of Pierce away from being an independent, direct research laboratory,” a press release states. “We expect that aligning the Pierce assets with Yale will result in greater scientific research productivity and strengthened impact of Pierce’s assets versus operating as an independent research laboratory.” In a recent phone interview with the Independent, Will Ginsberg — the current president of Pierce’s board, and the now-retired former director of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven — said that the lab’s gifts to Yale will likely total close to $18 million in value. Ginsberg said that the property sale to Winstanley is in service of that broader gift plan to Yale; the proceeds from the sale will be included in Pierce’s final gift to the university. Ultimately, Pierce decided that the best way “to get the most research for the dollars that Pierce had” was to gift all of its assets to Yale “to fund [five] senior-level, permanently endowed positions [and two graduate fellowships] at Yale, rather than to continue to bear the expenses of running an independent research lab.” He said that, prior to the lab’s closure, Pierce employed three “primary investigators” who also worked at Yale. Ginsberg said that Pierce is still working on finalizing the terms of its gift to the university, which should be completed in the next few months. Why sell to Winstanley instead of to Yale directly? Ginsberg said that, after negotiating with Yale, Pierce decided to put the building on the market. Given Winstanley’s significant investment in city medical-district real estate, and its close working relationship with Yale, Pierce decided to sell them the properties. BioCT, a group that advocates for area’s life sciences industry, states on its website that a company called Bexorg is a tenant of 290 Congress. “Bexorg is a biotech startup working on a perfusion device and blood analog for organ recovery,” BioCT’s websites states. “Operations include but are not limited to (1) manufacturing and assembly of machines, software, and biofluids/proteins, and (2) research services with data as a product.” The Pierce lab building at 290 Congress. The post Winstanley Buys Pierce Lab Building For $5M appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less