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Tech
Grows in Downtown
Officials
hope Biotech Park will make Virginia a
player in the industry.
by Jeffrey Kelley
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
Mike
Grisham faced a choice in 2001:
Virginia or Massachusetts.
Considering
he had licensed technology from
researchers in the Boston area, it would
make sense to open a new company in
Beantown, considered one of the top
regions for scientific study.
But
his wife had family in Virginia.
Plus,
Grisham jokes, it cost less to rent an
office in Richmond than it did a parking
space in Boston.
"One
of the reasons we started the company in
Richmond was the economic
benefits," said Grisham, president
and chief executive of Living
MicroSystems Inc., which is developing a
blood test for genetic abnormalities in
unborn babies.
Living
MicroSystems has chosen to make its home
among the handful of private and public
entities at the Virginia BioTechnology
Research Park, a 34-acre campus north of
Broad Street with nearly 1.1 million
square feet of office and lab space --
about the size of Short Pump Town
Center.
As
Robert T. Skunda walked up Navy Hill
Drive one day last month -- the sounds
of reversing trucks and clanking steel
in the air -- the park's president and
chief executive felt confident saying
Virginia is becoming an avid player
among its mid-Atlantic life-sciences
competitors.
A
big reason for his assessment towered
more than nine stories above and behind
him -- a $350 million monolith of steel
beams and glass panels on a site that,
just one year ago, was an asphalt
parking lot.
Philip
Morris USA, the nation's No. 1 cigarette
maker, is constructing a research and
development center that could employ
roughly 600 scientists and researchers
when it is completed in mid-2007. The
450,000-square-foot structure will
encompass nearly one-third of the park's
full buildout potential.
"When
you see it from [Interstate] 95 going
into the city, it really does jump out
from the landscape," said Gregory
H. Wingfield, president of Greater
Richmond Partnership, an
economic-development group.
He
said the center is the largest
tech-related construction project
downtown since NewMarket Corp., formerly
Ethyl Corp., opened a $70 million
research and development center in 1994
on the former site of the Virginia State
Penitentiary.
"There
are not that many communities that get a
[research] center of that magnitude
dropped into the middle of
downtown," Wingfield said.
More
construction is planned.
In
September, a building home to Virginia
Commonwealth University's procurement
offices will be razed and replaced by a
$20 million facility with lab and office
space for other firms. It will be
completed in April 2007.
The
road to success for biotechnology firms
and their investors is an expensive and
long one.
The
risks also are high, though matched with
larger reward.
Biotechnology
researches and develops services and
products such as drugs or devices that
can solve problems or improve health.
The
park has 22 tenants in its business
incubator.
It
has graduated 31 firms in its nearly
11-year history. Three companies are
publicly traded.
Eight
have failed.
Years
ago, Skunda, the park's president, said
a biotech firm opening up on the East
Coast might consider offices in
science-heavy regions to the north and
south of Virginia.
"For
a while, I would say Maryland and North
Carolina were the bookends, and we were
kind of in-between, trying to gain
credibility and legitimacy," Skunda
said. "Five years ago, we weren't
there. We are there now."
But
some experts say beyond the Old
Dominion, the Virginia biotech park is
not considered a major industry player,
if one at all.
The
West Coast, Northeast corridor and
Research Triangle Park in North Carolina
are considered top areas for
biotechnology study in the U.S. The
Richmond park was not listed among 12
centers for life-sciences research in a
2004 survey by economic think tank the
Milken Institute.
"That
just means that it will be more
difficult for Virginia to move up
because there are other areas
solidifying," said Scott Doron,
director of the Southern Technology
Council, which promotes technology
throughout the South.
A
belief in the industry is the U.S. will
have eight to 10 cities that are key to
biotech development, he said. Virginia
won't likely have any of them, he added.
But
it doesn't mean the state can't be a
player.
"Virginia
does have some good assets," Doron
said. "It just means that success
is not assured."
What
has made biotech-heavy regions prosper
are some of the same resources found in
central Virginia, primarily the backing
of universities and medical centers.
In
Richmond, the park has a strong link to
Virginia Commonwealth University
physicians and researchers on its
medical and academic campuses. VCU
President Eugene P. Trani is chairman of
the biotech park.
Like
other major universities, VCU has a
technology transfer office that helps
researchers get patents or copyrights on
products, processes or services. That
intellectual property could then shape a
company at the biotech park, leading to
something that can be sold to benefit
society.
"The
most crucial thing moving the biotech
park forward is getting leading
professors at the universities in
Virginia," Living MicroSystems'
Grisham said. "You've got to have a
cutting-edge technology, and it has to
be world class because it is a global
environment. But you've got to be the
best."
Many
agree that what central Virginia lacks
is a backbone of venture capital money,
necessary to expand the site's
companies.
Biotechnology
parks aren't built in a day.
Research
Triangle Park, for instance, was founded
in 1959. It grew slowly throughout the
1960s, but landing IBM Corp. and an
environmental-health group during that
decade helped push forward the park's
expansion. Today, the North Carolina
park employs roughly 37,600 and has a
capital investment of more than $2
billion.
Investment
into the downtown Richmond site is
approaching a half-billion dollars.
When
the biotech park is fully developed in
the next five to 10 years, Trani expects
at least 1.5 million square feet of
space compared with about 1.1 million
square feet today.
Once
Philip Morris opens, nearly 2,000
workers will come to work at the park.
Eventually, the park is expected to
employ 3,000 researchers, technicians
and engineers.
Trani
said there is room for 300,000 square
feet of additional buildings as well as
parking for up to 700 cars on the blocks
that make up the John Marshall Courts
parking lot and the city's Public Safety
Building. The park is in talks with the
city to expand there, Trani said.
Once
fully developed downtown, the park could
hop Interstate 95 into parking lots and
a helicopter landing pad adjacent to
Seventh Street, he said. The biotech
park also has satellite locations in
Henrico and Chesterfield counties.
Skunda,
the park's president, figured it would
take a really special project to develop
the two city blocks bordered by Jackson,
Leigh, Seventh and Fifth streets.
He
thought it would be the last area to see
construction.
He
was wrong.
Philip
Morris announced the Research and
Technology center for that site in April
2005. Construction
began that June and is about 40 percent
complete, company spokesman Bill Phelps
said.
The
site will conduct research into products
or processes that might reduce the risks
of smoking, while public-health groups
and tobacco-control advocates express
skepticism that a cigarette company can
be trusted to do such a thing.
Skunda
said not all of the research performed
at the site may of use to Philip Morris,
but technology could be licensed to
entrepreneurs to start new businesses at
the park.
"A
lot of it is just going to have to
evolve between us and Philip
Morris," he said. "You really
look at it as this big scientific
generator."
This
article was originally published June 4,
2006, in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Staff staff writer John Reid Blackwell
contributed to this report.
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