Study will assess potential for wet lab as Innovation Park eyes future development

Study will assess potential for wet lab as Innovation Park eyes future development


"Eric Graban moved here in December 2013. Once every month or two, he's making a 12-hour road trip to Bloomington, Ind., because Tallahassee lacks what he needs — a wet laboratory.
He founded Reclaim RX, a start-up company where he's developing technology to help ensure the safety of biologic drugs. Graban relocated after his wife landed a job at Florida State University while pursuing a doctorate degree.
A local wet lab would be ideal. Yet he's forced to rely on connections and research back in Bloomington or delay progress.
"We have to go where the facilities are and where our work can be accommodated. I have to go to where I can step in and just do it," Graban said.
The lack of a wet lab is a common complaint. On Monday, Innovation Park launched a $35,100 feasibility study to determine if nearly 12 acres of undeveloped land could support a wet lab, assess how it may look and determine a business plan moving forward. Long Performance Advising based in Bloomington is conducting the study, which should be complete in 10 to 12 weeks.
A wet lab — one where chemicals, drugs and biological material are tested and analyzed — requires ventilation, water and specialized piping. It represents one of the largest spaces requested by high-tech and research-based companies. It's also a major piece in the park's big picture for becoming a hub for commercializing technology homegrown in Tallahassee.
It could be four to five years before a local wet lab is built, said Innovation Park Executive Director Ron Miller. A wet lab would cost $500,000 per square foot. Additional equipment and infrastructure may cranks up the price, creating a total estimated cost of $20 million.
"This would be very unique. Right now we are losing companies that are trying to do start ups here in this area," Miller said. "The need for a wet lab incubator is really driven by the technologies that are coming out of the universities and the rest of the community."
The park's wet lab would a be rented space and it would include services and resources for start ups.
"When you're a new business and starting up, especially in high tech, you need a lot of help. You may be a scientist who doesn't really have an entrepreneurial background," Miller said. "A lot of times when people think incubator, they're thinking the building and that's a small part of it. Sometimes it's the expensive part, but a small part of it."
Losing out on more companies and potential local jobs is the last thing Innovation Park wants to see continue.
Some companies have chosen to work with the Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator in Alachua, a 40,000-square-foot facility affiliated with the University of Florida, Miller said. It's had more than two dozen biotech companies and start ups complete its program, including Nanomedex Inc., BioEnergy International and Intergrated Plant Genetics.
Innovation Park is located in southwest Tallahassee. It's home to FSU's world-renown National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (Mag Lab for short). The park includes more than 50 organizations and a handful of private sector companies who employee roughly 1,500 residents.
It needs to feel more like a campus, officials say, not to mention more welcoming. Miller and others envision the park to be where researchers and innovators can bounce ideas off one another, live or be temporarily housed within close proximity of their research.
The authority's board is weighing options for on-site eating and housing, especially since the Mag Lab alone generates 5,000 hotel stays per year from researchers from the around the country and world, Miller said.
Three buildings with vacant space could mark more growth. The Collins Building has 10,000 square feet that could be used as start-up space for light assembly and manufacturing. The National Park Service plans to expand inside the Johnson Building, which has 13,000 square feet of vacant space.
Innovation Park is poised for growth. The last few years has been about shuffling complex leases and land swaps between FSU, Florida A&M University and the Leon County Research & Development Authority, which governs Innovation Park.
Two buildings were given to FSU and one to FAMU as part of the land swap, along with 17 acres of land within the park to both universities.
FAMU has a parcel on the southwest corner of Innovation Park, and FSU has a parcel in the north and northeastern section. FSU is considering a 100,000-square-foot research building which will include wet lab space for research for the university's purposes.
Authority board members say the park reinvested in property and is moving toward creating resources to help entrepreneurs.
"This is the year I've been waiting for year," said Kristin Dozier, a county commissioner who chairs the authority's 11-member board. "For me and for the board of governors, we have always known that the potential of the research and development and Innovation Park has never been realized.
Our goal over the last few years was to put ourselves in a potion where we can reinvest in the property and create resources that help entrepreneurs in Leon County," Dozier said. "We have a certain role to play. The proof now, I believe, is going to come in a few years."


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Helluvanengineer
2/19/2015



"This is very, very good if FSU wants to pursue research in biomedical, chemical, materials, or drugs. Basically, it's a set of labs that are designated for mixing chemicals and isolating them to avoid causing harm to researchers using them. This is important for FSU in that it will also be a dedicated site for potentially handling/disposing wastes, which tend to be a common issue on campus.

On a related note, FSU does not have many cleanrooms (if any) that are currently in operation since I've been there. These labs are critical in areas of electronics research where extraneous particulates on a wafer or similar substrate could have drastic negative effects on computational efficiency or electrical conductivity. This can be particularly troublesome when sharing lab-spaces or having multiple purposes for labs. Separating spaces for "wet" and "dry" research is very important in not only quality research like superconductive materials, but future maintenance of facilities.You won't need a concrete mixing bay approved for Class 10 nano particulate counts, which is exorbitantly expensive to clean.

Bottom line, the more space FSU gets for dedicated lab equipment, the better. This is part of getting the COE and research in general up-to-date with others.

Interestingly, people talk about the cost of FAMU and FSU getting their own College of Engineering... Well, what about the cost of getting FAMU-FSU up-to-date facilities? Those costs are likely not too different."