Move Over Mickey, Scripps to Build $400 Million Florida Biotech Research Center In Palm Beach County

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). If Florida governor Jeb Bush manages to convince lawmakers to commit $310 million in support, The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) (LaJolla, California) plans to build a massive biomedical research campus in the sunshine state. TSRI, the world's largest nonprofit biomedical research center, has chosen a 1,920 acre orange grove in Palm Beach County instead of Orlando (PEC 05002414) for the site of an east coast version of what has proved to be very lucrative asset to their west coast host city of LaJolla, California. Boosters of the plan are announcing very un-Mickey Mouse like numbers including 6,500 new jobs, almost $2 billion in additional income to Floridians and a boost to the state's gross domestic product by $3 billion in the next 15 years.

TSRI President Richard Lerner has e-mailed his LaJolla staff reassuring them that the new center would not be a replacement facility and "...the quality of our research and staffing, level of funding, facilities, and overall operations [in La Jolla] will not be disrupted or adversely affected in any way by the establishment of a Florida operation"...

TSRI has long been praised for attracting top academics, federal research grants, biotech startups, pharmaceutical companies, venture capitalists and multiple other investments to southern California. Florida wants those results duplicated in their state. An estimated 40 new companies have emerged as a result of TSRI LaJolla operations. Preliminary plans call for a 360,000-square-foot laboratory outfitted with the best equipment and staffed by top employees recruited from around the globe. The center will focus on biomedical research, technology development, and drug design.

TSRI Florida plans to move into temporary laboratory and research space in the former Pratt & Whitney facility in Palm Beach County beginning next year. They'll set up operations there while Florida's newest economic Magic Kingdom is being built.

Click the following link to view Industrialinfo.com's 2003 North American Pharmaceutical-Biotech Forecast.