NC and Florida Biotech Sites Go Forward

Two biotech facility developments – in western North Carolina and in Florida – are moving forward.

This week David Murdock, the owner of Dole Co., joined with Erskine Bowles, the president of the University of North Carolina, visited the state legislature in Raleigh to lobby for financial support for a proposed $1 billion biotechnology center in the former site of a textile facility in the town of Kannapolis, near Charlotte. (See previous New Biology Economy article).

According to coverage by The Associated Press, Murdock asked the state to consider removing a 7 percent tax on equipment purchased for the center. Bowles asked the legislature for a $5 million one-time funding and $1 million in recurring funds to support the project.

Meantime, back in Kannapolis, an executive for Castle & Cooke, Murdock's real estate firm, told the Cabarrus Regional Chamber of Commerce, that the biotech facility, to be named The North Carolina Research Campus, should generate some 2,200 jobs in its first 30 months of operations. That would not just be scientific jobs, but would include support staff and other workers at the campus, which will additionally have living, retail and public facilities.

According to an article from the Charlotte Observer newspaper, the initial construction of the core laboratory building, the keystone of the 350-acre facility, will be completed in November 2007. Ground was broken in February. Additionally, the design for a building housing scientists from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, is expected to be started first and will join buildings for scientists from Duke and North Carolina State University projected to be completed by the end of 2007 or early 2008.

Meantime, in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush approved a 99-year lease between Florida Atlantic University in Abacoa and The Scripps Research Institute. Subject to approval by the Scripps board, the lease wraps up a deal to locate an eastern branch of Scripps in the state of Florida, a economic-development play supported by an estimated $600 million in state and county funds. (See previous New Biology Economy report on Scripps in Florida.