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An 8-story New Haven office building could be come lab space in a proposal being considered by the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals.

The 55 Church St. building was built in 1972 and contains around 100,000 square feet of office space in 11,000-square-foot floor plates, plus ground-floor retail space. It is owned by local real estate developers and property managers The Hurley Group.

Because New Haven’s zoning code limits lab space to 2,000 square feet of net floor area, Hurley will have to seek relief from the city ZBA, which is set to hear the case Tuesday.

Biotech companies spinning off of research at Yale University and Yale New Haven Medical Center are creating a mini-boom in life science real estate in the city.

Winstanley Enterprises received the OK from city officials earlier this year for a 500,000 square-foot tower downtown and a joint venture of Twining Properties, L+M Development Partners and the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group is marketing 90,000 square feet of lab-ready space at their Winchester Works complex near the university’s Science Park complex north of downtown.

Because of the speed at which many biotech firms need to expand, most lab real estate development must happen on spec.