Research parks hit their stride-Collaboration at ASU, UA is paying off

When IBM Corp. laid off thousands of workers in Tucson and sold its isolated campus to the University of Arizona in the early 1990s, many thought the university had bought a white elephant.

Jane Larson
The Arizona Republic

And when the Arizona State University Research Park turned farmland into an oasis of lakes, jogging trails and room for high-tech companies, a plunge in the Valley’s real estate market made that look like a bad idea, too.

Today, though, the UA Science and Technology Park is fully leased, and officials are eagerly recruiting companies for a state-of-the-art building they have just constructed. ASU is about three-quarters leased and losing Motorola Inc. as a tenant. Park officials, however, are laying plans for a biotech village, complete with common labs and a library that would be the centerpiece of the 320-acre Tempe development.

"The whole intention of our park is to be an extension of the university," said Bruce Wright, chief operating officer of the UA park.

The two Arizona parks are among 130 such parks in the United States and Canada.

University-related research parks are designed to house research and development facilities and high-tech and science companies. Often, they have formal relationships with universities to promote collaboration with industry and to bring new ideas developed in the university labs to the commercial world.

Some that have lacked a strong tie between universities and tenant companies have struggled, said Bill Drohan, executive director of the Reston, Va.-based Association of University Research Parks.

He calls collaboration between university professors and park companies one of the biggest keys to successful parks. "Once they get that collaboration going, some great things can happen," he said.

Large biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies have put research facilities at North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park to be close to the universities and to hire their graduates, he said. Pharmaceutical giant Novartis remodeled a factory across the street from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s research park just to be close to the kind of people who could develop new products, he said.

"That’s the ripple effect," Drohan said. "It’s what everybody dies for."

Officials in Arizona’s two largest universities would like to match that kind of success.

The UA park is trying to create a center where technology can grow from the lab into mature companies, Wright said.

The park requires tenant companies to have a working relationship of some sort with the school, whether it is hiring interns, using faculty as consultants or licensing university-created technology.

The UA park began its life housing a remaining group of researchers from IBM’s Storage Systems Group.

It added a company developing a new kind of battery for consumer electronics, then one that manufactures peptides, an organic chemical, for pharmaceutical companies. In February, it dedicated a 72,000-square-foot building designed to attract new and emerging technology companies.

Park officials have launched an extensive marketing campaign on the East Coast and even in Canada to attract companies to Tucson.

The ASU park was founded in 1984 but didn’t turn profitable until 1998, as income from leases of its land grew, Associate Director Eileen Walker said. The ASU park differs from its Tucson counterpart in that it leases land to tenants on 99-year leases and companies build their own buildings.

The ASU park’s goal is to encourage high-tech economic development, Walker said. Most recently, it has been working with the Arizona Bioindustry Association to foster budding biotech companies and is seeking private developers as partners in a long-term plan to create a "biotech village" within the park. The plans call for one of the buildings to include wet-lab space, now severely lacking in the state.

The plan could help offset the loss of Motorola , which will move its 150 employees this summer into the company’s other locations as part of its ongoing workforce cuts and consolidation.

Tenants in the Tempe park are not legally required to collaborate with ASU but many do, Walker said. Some companies have research agreements with the university, while others make contributions or are active with its executive education programs.

Both parks offer amenities attractive to high-tech workers. The ASU park has lakes, jogging trails and bike paths, while the UA park offers its desert setting, hosts conferences and plans to select a development team for an on-site hotel this summer. Both help companies hire interns and graduates, and they offer university classes, such as MBA programs, to tenant companies’ employees.

Research parks aren’t for every community, though.

Northern Arizona University does not have a research park nor does it plan to build one, spokesman David Ortiz said. The Flagstaff school will soon construct an Applied Research and Development building and has approval for a lab facility, both of which will host faculty research, he said.

Having research facilities on campus allows NAU to integrate research and teaching, to the benefit of students and the community, he said.

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or (602) 444-8280.

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