Boston Scientific continues to build on its significant Minnesota footprint. The Massachusetts-based medical device giant on Monday opened an Arbor Lakes facility in Maple Grove. The new 400,000-square-foot campus adds to the company’s planned buildout of its other Maple Grove facility less than five miles away. Amid these developments, Boston Scientific plans to sell its 226,000-square-foot complex in Minnetonka.

This means the Fortune 500 company’s new site, off I-694 and north of Eagle Lake, will stand as one of three major Boston Scientific locations in Minnesota, along with the expanded Maple Grove facility, on Weaver Lake Road, and a facility in Arden Hills. 

The expansion reflects Boston Scientific’s continued growth. The cardiovascular side of the business, which makes up nearly two-thirds of net sales, has grown rapidly over the past several years—“north of 10%, approaching 20%,” says Joe Fitzgerald, executive vice president and group president of cardiology.

“This tremendous growth that we’ve experienced in the last three or four years—if you’re putting 10% on that every year, you need space for new employees [and] acquired companies.” He adds that Boston Scientific is approaching $20 billion in fiscal year 2025. Its organic net sales grew more than 17% year-over-year in the most recent quarter.

The new building contains office space as well as lab testing space for R&D and quality assurance. The facility also has an “innovation center” to support product and procedure simulations for visiting cardiologists, Fitzgerald says.

Other campus features include a cafeteria, a coffee shop, outdoor spaces, conference rooms, auditoriums, phone rooms, huddle rooms, collaboration areas, and a fitness center.

The campus marks the continuation of Boston Scientific’s plans to expand in Minnesota. 

The Weaver Lake facility was Boston Scientific’s entry into Minnesota when it acquired SciMed Life Systems in 1995. The company picked up its Arden Hills site in 2006, acquiring the pacemaker company Guidant. After that, it moved two legacy divisions to Minnesota—Peripheral Interventions, from Boston, and Electrophysiology, from the Bay Area.

The acquisitions and moves “helped create the basis of our footprint here,” Fitzgerald says.

The Arbor Lakes building is intended to free up space at the Weaver Lake site for manufacturing. Currently, the Weaver Lake facility serves three core businesses of Boston Scientific. These generally seek to advance minimally invasive medical specialties, and they include the Watchman implant, designed for certain patients with atrial fibrillation. The building also serves the marketing, R&D, and finance departments. The Arbor Lakes facility is set to take on those core businesses and support functions.

“Over time, with continued expansion, our goal is to make Weaver Lake nearly 100% manufacturing and move all business operations to different locations,” Fitzgerald says. The new facility will focus on R&D, quality assurance, and product testing.

Fitzgerald, pointing to Boston Scientific’s mission of delivering product and therapy innovation by advancing science, notes the Arbor Lakes location “[has] created more space—and, in certain instances, better space—to actually drive that innovation of new product development, new therapy development, new ideas of clinical science.”