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Burnham deal seen as 'big-bang win' for economy
Written by Harry Wessel
Posted August 24, 2006 |
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The Burnham Institute's decision to expand to Orlando makes Central Florida an instant player in the $700 billion biomedical industry.
It will take a few years to determine how lucrative the deal will be for the region, but Burnham's presence could be a giant boost for the Lake Nona area -- if more companies cluster around the growing campus that already boasts an upcoming University of Central Florida medical school and a planned VA hospital.
Burnham, which plans to build a 175,000-square-foot facility and employ as many as 300 scientists and support staff within a decade, was likened to the sun in a developing solar system -- with start-up firms and other research facilities as its planets.
"The planets forming will be those closely related to Burnham and the medical school," said UCF economist David Scott, who stuck with astronomical metaphors in calling Burnham's decision "a big-bang win" for Central Florida.
No one would put a dollar figure Wednesday on how much money the La Jolla, Calif.-based medical institute might generate for the region, but Rasesh Thakkar, chief executive officer of Tavistock Group, Lake Nona's developer, cited studies predicting UCF's medical school alone would mean $1.4 billion annually to the economy within 10 years of its opening.
Burnham "will have a compounding effect with the med school," Thakkar predicted. With the school, a planned Veterans Affairs hospital and Burnham, "you'll have the anchors of what is a medical city."
Predictions that Burnham's presence will generate 3,600 jobs within 15 years are reasonable, said Mark Johnston, a professor of business at Rollins College in Winter Park.
"In order to start moving into another [industrial] area, you need to have a big company come and locate," he said. "You need a big hit."
But Central Florida must respond with improvements to schools, roads and other infrastructure, he said.
For people interested in working for institutions such as Burnham or biomedical spinoff companies, "quality of life is important," Johnston said. "If their kids can't get a good education, if they have trouble getting to work because of the roads, that's a problem."
Burnham and UCF's medical school won't open their doors for a couple of years, so any real economic effects won't materialize for three to five years, predicted Dr. Clarence Brown, who heads the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Orlando.
Still, Burnham's presence and its collaboration with academia and the region's two major hospital systems "gives us all a better chance of getting federal funds to support research," Brown said. He said that recruiting scientists and top researchers to Central Florida will now be far easier for everyone "because they'll see Burnham in our backyard."
Brown said that biomedical clusters can take decades to develop, though he thinks Central Florida's may move more quickly because it has a running start with Burnham, the new medical school and the VA hospital.
The Lake Nona complex, just south of Orlando International Airport, will also include a research facility jointly operated by Burnham and the University of Florida, as well as UCF's Burnett College of Biomedical Sciences.
Scott, the UCF economist, said attracting high-wage technology jobs to a region known for its low-wage, service-based tourism economy would be significant.
For one thing, it would reduce the risk of an economic downturn, because the economy would be more diversified, he said.
Jim Lewis, president of Disney Vacation Club and chairman of the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce, also touted the prospect of a more diversified economy.
Many of the region's hourly workers in entry-level jobs "are going to school. This gives them the hope and promise there will be more higher-paid jobs in this community" when they graduate, Lewis said.
Burnham also gives hope and promise to Henry Daniell, a UCF biology professor and entrepreneur, who founded a biotech start-up, Chlorogen Inc., in 2001. He quickly moved the company to St. Louis, to be near the biotech giant Monsanto Co., "because we didn't have that kind of biotech environment here."
Now Daniell is moving the company back to Orlando, along with its 15 to 20 employees, most of whom make six-figure salaries.
"We have a cluster effect, and everybody feels comfortable," he said. "That level of comfort was not here five years ago. We didn't have the talented people; we didn't have neighbors to exchange information. The biotech environment was nonexistent."
Daniell said UCF has recruited faculty who have founded their own biotech companies, and he expects the Burnham announcement will further that effort.
Never known for biotech, Florida has changed its image, Daniell said.
The state persuaded another famous biomedical center from Southern California, Scripps Research Institute, to open a satellite operation in South Florida three years ago with state and local incentives totaling more than $500 million.
Such efforts make economic sense, Daniell said.
"It's a $700 billion industry. Florida has been missing out on this," he said. "We are now dipping into that big pot of cash."
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