Image courtesy of Elkus Manfredi Architects

Yale University will be the other major tenant in a 525,000-square-foot tower set to rise in downtown New Haven.

The building at 101 College St., planned by Winstanley Enterprises on speculation, is aimed at taking advantage of the city’s growing life sciences cluster. The city has a severe shortage of existing lab space, leaving many firms to leave for New York or Boston if they grow beyond a certain point.

“Improving our STEM entrepreneur and innovation ecosystem, including our core facilities, are central tenets of our university science strategy,” Provost Scott Strobel, the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry, said in a statement. “Our investment in 101 College Street attends to those and many other current and future needs. It’s a wonderful chance to work with our partners in New Haven to continue to create a vibrant, attractive innovation hub that draws talented people and great ideas to our region.”

Yale will lease 125,000 square feet on three floors of the tower and provide financial backing for a 48,000-square-foot incubator space planned for the building, the university announced. BioLabs, a Massachusetts-based company specializing in managing biotech incubator spaces, will operate the incubator.

The lease announcement comes mere weeks after life science startup Arvinas said it was taking 160,000 square feet of space in the Winstanley building.

Yale did not state what it would use its space in 101 College St. for, but it has said it is moving its Wu Tsai Institute research team into Winstanley’s neighboring 100 College St. building next year.