Biotech Boom

Biotech Boom

The emerging biotechnology market has real-estate developers and communities scurrying to get a piece of the lucrative business.

After all, it brings highly educated workers with big paychecks to the area, demands sophisticated and expensively constructed facilities, requires little in government services and the industry is environmentally friendly. It provides a solid tax base for government, disposable income for shop owners and restaurants and can be a boon to a university looking to expand its research.

It's a major growth industry and Lee County has its sights set squarely on it.

But governments rarely have the expertise or money to attract biotech firms. John Madden, however, does.

The Colorado-based developer with a home on Captiva Island, is launching a $500 million development on county land near the old Southwest Florida International airport,

calling it Madden Research Loop. The development was strategically planned in close proximity to the airport, Florida Gulf Coast University and Interstate-75 to lure medical researchers, pharmaceutical companies and other biotech industries said Steve Brown, Madden's vice president of project development.

 

"Normally, you pay someone to do it for you and they're doing it," said Lee Commissioner Tammy Hall. "It's really exciting. It's a great way to utilize that property out there."

Madden has partnered with the Lee County Port Authority - the Lee County Commission oversees the Authority - to lease land at the former site of airport terminal and support facilities.

The agreement includes 25 acres of land owned by the Port Authority on which Madden will build 275,000 square feet of Class A office space: four buildings and a parking garage set around a lake at the north end of the airport's runway. There, scientists or executives visiting the site could land their jets and walk to work. The park will also include public nature trails and art, one of Madden's signatures.

"It's a very attractive location for research, for both U.S. and global medical device companies and pharmaceutical companies," said William Knab, chairman, Southwest Florida Chapter of BioFlorida. "When you look at areas like San Diego or the Boston area, this is exactly how they started - industry,

COURTESY RENDERING An artist's rendering of the proposed Madden Research Loop.

academia, and location…I think when you add that number of highly educated professional people to the community it's gotta have positive effects all the way around. Their demands, from the school systems to everything else, will have higher standards and push the community to higher standards."

Brown said tenants at the park will enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship with local education and health care providers, and even others from around the region and the state.

"It's not a Lee County Project, it's a regional project," he said. "We do think this is a state project at the end of the day. We get the feeling that this part of the state has been neglected for too long."

The puzzle pieces

Ultimately it was Lee County's already solid base of growth, with an airport and schools like FGCU and Edison College, that sealed the deal for Madden, said Brown.

COURTESY RENDERING PARKER/MUDGETT/SMITH ARCHITECTS Madden Research Loop on land at the old terminal at Southwest Florida International Airport.

"That University is going to be a tremendous asset to the companies that come in here."

And vice versa, said Janusz Zalewski, Professor of computer science at FGCU.

"We'd have a much better opportunity to work on some interesting projects if that place really takes off," he said. "For me and for the faculty it would be a great way to connect to some potentially cutting edge research."

Commissioner Hall agreed.

"Now we can justify training bio chemists because there's a job for them in this area," she said. "The goal is not to have 75 percent of your economy in the Construction Industry. We want to see the opportunity for people to graduate from College and be able to have a job."

That's a point Lee County Commissioner Ray Judah underlined, calling the development's ramifications "monumental."

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"Relying solely on agriculture, tourism and construction can be a very tenuous and vulnerable situation," he said. "Obviously the downturn in the housing market has demonstrated that fact. If one of the three legs to the stool propping up our economy falters, it hurts the entire economic base, so the Madden group really is a critical anchor in our efforts to broaden, deepen and diversify (the economy)."

Jennifer Berg, spokesperson for Lee County Office of Economic Development, agreed.

"It fit's perfectly with our mission and the types of businesses we want to attract," she said. "They're bringing dollars into the local community but they're not dependant on the cycles of the local community."

The plan

Madden Research Loop will only take up a small portion of the Skyplex Commercial Center on which it will sit.

Skyplex will continue to be 750 acres of undeveloped Port Authority land, until Gulf Coast Technology breaks ground on its 25-acre parcel in about six months. They have the option of leasing up to 140 acres more, but agreed to give the county ample room to do as they wish with the land.

Brown

That's because Brown is betting that future developments on the site will be of a similar quality to Madden Research Loop.

"We don't want to be the only development here but we want to set the standard," Brown said.

They are leading the way by using the space only for life science, research companies, or other "high quality tenants;" having buildings certified by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership Energy and Environmental Design Program; and leaving 60 percent of the land as open space.

Other unique qualities of Madden's development may be dictated by the buildings tenants and their employees. An estimated 800 positions for PhD qualified candidates at the research park will add some new faces to Lee County's still growing population of over 600,000, the largest in the region.

"Our tenants are not looking for cookie cutter," Brown said. "The scientific community is different. They want some unique things, like reading nooks in their buildings."

There might be libraries built into the lobby, for example. And the location is out of the way, at the end of meandering Chamerberlain Road off Daniels Parkway. The millions of dollars worth of research equipment that will be kept there - Brown called the numbers "staggering" - will be kept secure by Port Authority and Lee County law enforcement.

BioFlorida Chairman Knab predicts the development will take off quickly.

"Once you light the match, things really go," he said

But although the project has practically unanimous support among public officials, it still must contend with Florida's tough development regulations. Brown said the project's momentum has gone through ups and downs as it waits to pass inspection by agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Bureau and U.S. Army Core of Engineers.

"Because of the process (in Florida), we have lost tenants," he said. "With water and environmental impacts it's a huge issue."

And since it's built at the airport, the company must pass inspection by at least one more level of bureaucracy, the Federal Aviation Administration, on its way to laying the first brick.

The first tenant, yet to be announced, is already waiting to move into the first 60,000 square foot building, Brown said.

Madden's credits

The John Madden Company, which was founded in the mid-1960s in Omaha, Neb., has developed nearly 10 million square feet of office and related space in Colorado, Nebraska, Arizona, California, Michigan, Wyoming and Iowa. Past clients include Prudential, Information Handling Services, Chevron USA, Rockwell Automotive, Allstate Insurance, Equitable Real Estate and Eastdil Advisors. The company offers integrated real estate development services including land acquisition, construction management, brokerage and leasing, asset management and property management.

The company has been headquartered in Denver's Greenwood Plaza since 1970, and has received national attention for the plaza's innovative approach to master planning and development and its mix of art, architecture and landscaping. Other award-winning projects developed by John Madden Company include the Harlequin Plaza in Denver, which is included in the architectural book "Plazas of the 20th Century;" Plaza Tower One, the tallest building in Southeast Denver and the winner of the Building Owners and Managers Association's Building of the Year Award; and the 150 West Jefferson building in Detroit, which has won several awards for its distinctive architectural character.

And Madden is no stranger to Southwest Florida. His team often invokes the spirit of Fort Myer's most famous historic researcher and entrepreneur, Thomas Edison.

For example, when Madden described the research park project to 33 members of Leadership Lee County's 2008 class this spring, who were in Denver attending the Community Leadership Association's annual conference.

"It will be a phenomenal success right from the start," he said. "Southwest Florida has always had an innovative spirit. Thomas Edison came here to think, not to get away."

But Madden's company went further than just conjuring up old, local scientists. They hired Lee County companies to see the development through, rather than simply bringing in Madden's established teams from Colorado. Owen- Ames-Kimball/Steve Shimp is handling construction, for example, and Parker- Mudgett Smith will serve as architects.

"It'd be very easy for me to bring my Colorado crew, but they're not vested in this," Brown said.