After 55 years on Market Street, the Monell Chemical Senses Center is finally boxing up its beakers and heading a few blocks northwest, trading its aging digs for a shiny new home at One uCity Square. The nonprofit says it will shift its scientists and staff into purpose-built lab space early next year and will bring along its landmark “Face Fragment” sculpture. As part of the upgrade, Monell also plans to put its longtime Market Street properties up for sale while it settles into a modern life-sciences tower.
In a joint announcement, Monell and developer Wexford said the institute has signed a 20-year lease for roughly 64,000 square feet across three floors at One uCity Square, 25 N. 38th Street, with a planned opening in early 2027, according to uCity Square. The build-out is expected to include more than $30 million in infrastructure and facility upgrades to support cutting-edge imaging and cell-culture work.
Monell’s president and executive director, Benjamin P. C. Smith, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the move is less about vanity and more about necessity. "We're just at capacity," Smith said, adding that the new space "will be more open and collaborative in its design" and better suited to how the research teams actually work today.
Why the new space matters
Monell and its partners say the expanded footprint will center on shared labs, upgraded imaging suites, and more robust cell-culture capacity, making room for techniques such as organoids and other modern methods that simply do not fit in the older Market Street buildings. The shift into a purpose-built lab tower also tracks with a broader pattern of research organizations clustering in specialized life-science buildings, according to the institute's announcement via EurekAlert!.
What the move means for Market Street
Monell’s relocation will free up two long-occupied properties on Market Street, opening a rare pocket of space in a neighborhood where every lab and office square foot seems spoken for. PHILADELPHIA.Today reported that Monell intends to sell its Market Street buildings once the move is complete, a change first noted in coverage by the Philadelphia Business Journal.
Founded in 1968 and based at 3500 Market Street since the early 1970s, Monell is the world's only independent nonprofit devoted to the chemical senses of taste and smell. The institute's website and past coverage highlight decades of basic research, along with its prominent role in studying smell loss during the COVID-19 era. The relocation is framed as an investment in the center’s next chapter of discovery, according to the Monell Chemical Senses Center.
Developers and Monell leaders say the move keeps the institute firmly rooted in University City while adding another high-profile tenant to One uCity Square. The announcement notes that the tower is nearing full occupancy and that CBRE will handle listings for Monell’s Market Street properties. For observers tracking Philadelphia’s biotech boom, the move is one more sign that demand for purpose-built life-sciences space in the city is not letting up.
