Province’s crowded research centres urge government to sink economic stimulus dollars into Vancouver’s Great Northern Way Campus and other potential innovation hubs.
Curt Cherewayko, Business in Vancouver Magazine, February 17-23, 2009, Issue 1008.
Forget roads and bridges.
The Association of University Research Parks (AURP) and the BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) want innovation clusters to be a priority in government’s inventory of economic stimulus infrastructure projects.
On a list of university-affiliated, shovel-ready projects totally $400 million that AURP is delivering to Ottawa is a proposed 80,000-square-foot, $28.5 million facility at the Vancouver Island Technology Park (VITP).
Down the block from VITP in Sidney and across the street from the Institute of Oceans Sciences is the proposed site of a $28.3 million ocean engineering and energy centre. AURP is developing a master plan for the ocean centre, which would be up to 300,000 square feet.
Federal government financing for the projects is dependent on the provincial government covering half of their costs.
Dale Gann, AURP president and the VITP vice-president, told BIV that investments in research parks and other facilities that foster innovation generate returns long after the shovels have left the constructions sites.
“You get construction workers working, and then once facilities are built, we can fill them with knowledge workers that give back for 40 years.”
B.C. has two AURP-affiliated research parks: VITP and the Great Northern Way Campus (GNWC).
Notables companies among VITP’s 30 tenants are Vifor Pharma Corp. (formerly known as Aspreva Pharmaceuticals) and Genologics Life Sciences Software Inc.
A GNWC representative said the campus, located in East Vancouver’s False Creek Flats, is still developing a draft plan for its20-acre property, which, aside from the masters of digital media program and a cluster of less than a dozen organizations, remains unused industrial land. Finning International Corp. (TSX: FTT) originally donated the site to a consortium of Vancouver post-secondary schools in November 2001.
On a property adjacent to the GNWC is the headquarters of QLT Inc., one of B.C.’s most successful biotech companies.
Having fallen on hard times in recent years, QLT downsized and sold its headquarters last fall to Discovery Parks, a private trust that had developed four technology parks in Metro Vancouver.
Discovery is retrofitting the building, – which has 78,000 square feet vacant – to bring it up to standards and has identified it as the potential site for an incubator or accelerator lab.
“We see that as part of driving the whole Great Northern Way Campus and False Creek Flats area,” and Mark Betteridge, CEO of Discovery.
VITP and Discovery’s technology parks – the eight-acre Discovery Research Park in Burnaby and three others located on university campuses – have retained all their tenants in the downturn.
VITP is full and only one of the research parks developed by Discovery has a vacancy.
According to Discovery, demand for the specialized commercial-academic space in research parks is anticipated to increase by 1.3 million square feet over the next five years.
With all of B.C.’s research parks full or operating at near capacity and turning away potential tenants, Discovery is proposing to add a $13.5 million 43,000-square-foot facility at its research park at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Discovery wants the provincial government to contribute $6.5 million to the project.
Construction could be underway by May. The facility’s design and development would create an estimated 35 immediate jobs.
Betteridge said that because of the challenges in finding financing in the commercial real estate market, Discovery needs government help.
“What we’re saying to the provincial government is if you invest some money into this thing to offset some of that market risk, we’ll take the rest of it and get this thing going.”
Discovery is working with the Canada Wood Council Canfor Corp (TSX:CFP) and others in the forestry industry to design the building using a timber and concrete structural deck system made out of wood from pine beetle-infested forests.
According to Pascal Spothelfer, president and CEO of the BCTIA, which represents technology industries in B.C., the increased industry-to-industry and industry-to-academia collaborations that occur at research parks help crate a market focus for the province’s research innovations.
The day after the federal budget was announced last month, Spothelfer said in a note to BCTIA members that the government in committing $2 billion to repair retrofit and expand post-secondary facilities and $250 million for federal laboratories, has recognized that considerable maintenance and repairs in research and development infrastructure have been previously deferred.
Canada has 26 AURP-affiliated research parks employing 39,000 people.
The United States has 150 research parks.
Further abroad, India, which has three biotech parks, announced that it’s building another 20; China is reportedly building 30 new research parks by 2010.
http://www.gnwc.ca/files/2009feb17-23_biv_bc_tech_park_sparks.pdf
