The cost of and demand for research space is high and the technical requisites for safety and equipment maintenance continue to evolve. These issues are further compounded by the tendency for redundancy in space utilization among principal investigators and the fact that faculty and staff with majority appointments in areas other than research face greater challenges in obtaining and maintaining a research laboratory. These difficulties are being addressed by the Crop Production and Physiology Laboratory Group in the Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University. This poster discusses the development, safety and operational parameters of this group's shared laboratory cluster, currently utilized by faculty members with appointments in extension, teaching and research programs.