St. Louis area offers several research parks

From the ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 10/26/2007
By Rachel Melcer

A new report indicates that with a lot of persistence and a little patience, a crop of budding university research parks could put a bloom on the local economy.

The Association of University Research Parks, a trade group, surveyed 134 of its 350 North American members to quantify their economic development benefits. The resulting report was set for release today during the group's annual meeting, being held at the Chase Park Plaza in the Central West End.

It found that these parks %u2014 carefully planned real estate developments that link high-tech and science-based companies with nonprofit institutions of research and education %u2014 serve the economy in several ways:

%u2022By establishing high-tech clusters where large and small companies can collaborate with one another and top-notch university researchers around areas of focus, such as developing drugs or sources of renewable energy.

%u2022They provide a place for starting new companies, helping local firms grow and attracting employers from other states. The lure is access to a university's basic research, a pool of student workers and job training capabilities.

%u2022Universities benefit from corporate research funds and attract students with on-the-job learning opportunities and the promise of employment with tenant firms.

%u2022They create professional jobs %u2014 more than 300,000 in North America.

In the last five years, nearly 800 firms graduated from business incubators located in university research parks, the report said. Of these, 90 percent remained in their home region; about 200 moved to other buildings within the park. Just 13 percent of the companies failed.

"For the average Joe, that means that their sons and grandsons, their daughters and granddaughters, won't have to leave the region to find jobs," said Walter Plosila, author of the report and vice president of the Technology Partnership Practice of the Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Columbus, Ohio.

The St. Louis region is "blessed," said Mike Bowman, president of the research park association. "It's recognized that it has a lot to offer. %u2026 You have critical mass."

This area has four university research parks %u2014 plus seeds that could develop into two more %u2014 focused on a range of high-growth industries including biomedicine, health care, agricultural biotechnology and information technology.

The most mature is Missouri Research Park, built 21 years ago by the University of Missouri on 700 acres in St. Charles County that had been an experimental farm. It is populated by two federal agencies and 17 companies, about half of which are actively engaged with university research, said Executive Director Rick Finholt. It has three lots left to develop.

It is an old-model research park, originally run by a private developer at arm's length %u2014 and a considerable geographic distance %u2014 from the university system. Finholt said these days, he works hard to build relationships among the companies and UM researchers, and to keep pace with rapidly changing technology.

"The biggest difference today is that universities are really taking control of these parks. %u2026 We want to control our destiny" by ensuring tenants share a cutting-edge research mission, he said.

A focused approach is being taken by Cortex, a development district in the Central West End and midtown St. Louis dedicated to biotech research and industry. Its first building opened last year and a second, the headquarters of Solae Inc., is under construction. But the district also encompasses the Center for Emerging Technologies, an expanding biotech business incubator, and touches world-class medical schools and health care centers.

Cortex was noted in the research park association's report for representing the latest thinking in research parks. It is a mixed-use development helping to revitalize an under-utilized urban core, with room for construction by its sponsoring research institutions as well as private developers.

A pair of other young parks are not so tightly focused around a single industry, but are committed to allowing only tenants that can work with and benefit from their host universities: UM-St. Louis Research Park in north St. Louis County, which so far has the headquarters of pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc.; and University Park at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, which is the host of an ethanol research center as well as health care training programs that could appeal to tenants.

"There is no road map here. It's new territory," said Jim Penne­kamp, executive director of University Park. "What's important is the ability to be flexible and continue to serve the needs of the community and the university. %u2026 We're here to support economic development."

Last month, the American Red Cross selected University Park from among 20 sites for a 170,000-square-foot blood processing center and testing laboratory that will bring more than 500 jobs when it opens in 2009. Part of the attraction was the university's focus on health science and the ability to train those workers, Pennekamp said.

Research institutions are a natural magnet for companies in today's knowledge-driven economy, said Bowman, of the research park association. Nationally, his group is supporting a U.S. Senate bill that would provide seed money to study the construction or expansion of research parks; and guaranteed loans for their construction.

That sort of aid could help a couple of other local research parks to get off the ground. In Creve Coeur, construction should begin soon on the first commercial lab building in what supporters hope will become a cluster of plant-science research and industry organized around the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. And in north St. Louis County, the University of Missouri-St. Louis is building a super computing center and incubator for information technology firms.

"We have taken the first significant steps to make this approach and capitalize on the potential offered by facilities development near research institutions," said Donn Rubin, executive director of the Coalition for Plant and Life Sciences, a St. Louis industry-building initiative. "The best is yet to come."

Plosila said his report shows that it takes time to build a thriving research park %u2014 in fact, the North American research park industry itself is young, with just 62 percent of planned acres so far developed.

"In this kind of business it's not instant gratification," he said. "But persistence and really sticking to it pays off."

rmelcer@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8394