The Leader - March/April 2009 - (Page 52) LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES: BIOTECH INDUSTRY PLAYS A PIVOTAL ROLE IN GLOBAL ISSUES, OFFERS INTRIGUING OPPORTUNITIES FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Realignment and Closure process with added personal and investment at Fort Sam Houston, Brooks was a casualty of the 2005 BRAC. Still, the U.S. Air Force continues to lease 1.8 million sq.ft. (167,225 sq. m.) of Brooks’ facilities through September 2011. Throughout its history, Brooks served as a center for medical research for the Air Force and NASA, so redeveloping the base with primarily a biotech focus made sense. Upon the base’s closing, Congress and the Texas legislature created Brooks City-Base, as congress conveyed the installation to the city of San Antonio, and the city entered a long-term leaseback with Brooks City-Base and the Brooks Development Authority (BDA), which was formed to redevelop the base. Now, the development authority has 500 vacant acres (202 hectares) at the 1,400-acre (567-hectare) Brooks City-Base and a total of 2 million sq. ft. (185,806 sq. m.) of existing facilities. The BDA is already plowing revenue derived from leases with the Air Force into infrastructure improvements, including widening and extension of New Braunfels Avenue, a major thoroughfare on San Antonio’s south side. “We want to target potential new customers outside San Antonio and Texas and bring new investment and jobs to this community,” said Don Jakeway, president and CEO of the BDA. “We're wonderfully positioned.” Jakeway joined BDA three years ago and began work on a transition and development plan to upgrade the base’s infrastructure and market Brooks City-Base to the private sector at market rates. The idea is to create a worldclass research and development campus attractive to biosciences, biomedical, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and telecom firms, with a mix of office and lab development, as well as pharma, bio and hightech manufacturing facilities. The BDA has completed its land-use master plan and hopes to enter a partnership with a commercial real estate services firm this spring to market Brooks City-Base nationally and internationally, armed with a quiver of state and local inducements applicable to the one-of-a-kind development, which is also part of a tax increment financing district. “We probably have more financial incentives for these 1,400 acres (567 hectares) than when I was economic development director for Ohio and the Michigan Economic Development Corp. combined,” Jakeway said. Already, Brooks City-Base has drawn more than $300 million in new development, including Baptist Hospital Systems’ $250 million new hospital campus. Baptist has acquired 28 acres (11 hectares) for a medical office building and 150-bed hospital, and the healthcare system has an option for an additional 20-plus acres (8-plus hectares) for additional development once the Air Force leaves Brooks. Locally based DPT Laboratories has completed a $24 million research and development facility at Brooks City-Base, and the company expects to add 175 pharma and biotech jobs to Brooks. Infrastructure is in place, too, for Class-A office development, and the BDA is currently in discussion with potential users for a 144,000-sq.ft. (13,378-sq.-m.), Gold LEED certified office building. Jakeway said the new office structure would need to be approximately 70 percent preleased before the BDA would break ground, but that big block and even single-user tenants had expressed interest. “The great thing about our flexibility is we can do whatever they need us to do,” Jakeway said. One person’s BRAC is another’s treasure As the Air Force transitions out of Brooks City-Base, many of that base’s functions are being transferred to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, to form the Air Force’s 711th Human Performance Wing, which includes the Orwellian sounding Human Performance Integration Directorate and Human Effectiveness Directorate, as well as the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine. The entire 711th Human Performance Wing will complete its migration to Wright-Patterson by 2011. With that migration, the Dayton region gains an enormous federal and biotech investment. The 711th includes the Air Force’s Applied Biotechnology Branch, where R&D includes genomics, proteomics, metabonomics, bioinformatics, engineering cellular systems and networks and physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling. It may take a PhD to explain what all that means in scientific terms, but ultimately it means a lot of smart people and high level-research moving to the Dayton region. Then you have, literally, the space doctors. The Air Force’s School of Aerospace Medicine traces its roots to 1918 and uses decades of subsequent data to study and expand ophthalmology, cardiology, pulmonology and human cognitive performance under the most rigorous conditions imaginable. The school’s labs at WrightPatterson further serve public health efforts with research involving the detection and treatment of viral, bacterial and other toxic agents. While the 711th is only a piece of Wright-Patterson’s $1.6 billion R&D pie, it’s still a significant piece. What’s more, private contractors and R&D will proliferate around the base, said Jane Dockery, associate director of the Center for Urban and Public Affairs at Wright State University in Dayton. “(Biotech) is anchored here in the literal sense,” Dockery said. “It’ll have a strong, long-lasting impact for the region. Now, the effort "Biotech is anchored here in the literal sense. It’ll have a strong, long-lasting impact for the region," said Jane Dockery. 2 0 0 9 THE LE ADE R 52 MARCH / APRIL
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