Talent by Design
Site Selection Magazine
July 2009
by Adam Bruns
In a land once known for valuable ores, companies today are mining an emerging vein of skill and capability. It's being brought to the surface by a varied network of knowledge conveyors, otherwise known as Missouri's higher education community.
A weeklong series of interviews, facility visits and group conversations in May 2009 encompassed more than 70 individuals and more than 1,100 miles. It also offered a complete course in how learning begets growth - of people, of companies and, ultimately, of innovation.
Drive along Olive Blvd. in suburban St. Louis and the names on the buildings pop out: Microsoft, TricorBraun, Smurfit-Stone. Just around the corner from these corporate campuses sits the campus of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the largest independent research institute in the world devoted to plant sciences.
The Danforth facility is home to 230 employees representing 25 countries, 188 of whom are scientists. The new Building I at Bio-Research & Development Growth (BRDG) Park, being developed by Wexford Science+Technology on the Danforth Center campus, will be home to a mix of labs and classroom space for St. Louis Community College, another space for Monsanto and a prime upper-floor space for Divergence, a world leader in developing products for the control of parasites in agriculture and medicine that graduated last year from the Nidus Center of Scientific Enterprise. Divergence sprang from the city's world-renowned Washington University. Nidus, sponsored by Monsanto, is moving into the building too.
One of the park's unique features will be the on-site biotechnician development and training program administered by St. Louis Community College.
"We just received a new NSF grant to start up our own CRO [contract research organization] here at BRDG Park," says Richard Norris, director of Plant and Life Sciences at the college. "I think it will be a perfect marriage."
The college's lauded biotechnician program is 10 years old, and Norris says half of its students are holders of bachelor's degrees who want the hands-on knowledge they didn't get during their four-year courses of study.
"There are more plant Ph.D.s in this region than anywhere else in the world," says Sam Fiorello, president of BRDG Park, in describing the St. Louis metro-area life sciences node, branded as the BioBelt, which is home to nearly 400 plant and life sciences companies with more than 16,500 employees. But even so, he says, having a work force development program in place to funnel skilled hands to the bench is a crucial tool that helps address a key shortage in the industry at large.
The Missouri Development Finance Board helped BRDG with $1 million in tax credits, as well as funds through the St. Louis Port Authority to offset the high tenant improvement costs that can come with such research-intensive properties.
"That's a critical barrier to entry," says Fiorello. "It can be $200 per square foot for core and shell cost, and depending on what sort of horsepower, it could be $150 to $200 per square foot in fit-up costs. That's a chunk of money. So the tenant improvement funds have been very helpful."
Among the center's founding principles are commercialization and collaboration. "We are constantly looking at trying to mine the technology that's created," says Fiorello.
Among the nations whose companies BRDG is targeting are China and Israel, says Fiorello. A recent global call for business plans netted close to 50 submissions. But the globe-leading innovations may not be so far away: Out of the 15 chosen for review by investors were two from Canada, one from New Zealand...and three from St. Louis itself.
This was an excerpt from Site Selection Magazine. Click here to view the entire article.
