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Orlando's big win
Written by Mark Schlueb and David Damron
Posted August 24, 2006 |
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To hear local leaders tell it, luring the Burnham Institute for Medical Research to Orlando will earn a spot in the history books right next to Walt Disney's transformation of Central Florida.
The nonprofit institute, which seeks to cure diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, announced Wednesday that it will bring at least 300 scientists and support staff here over the next 10 years, hopefully seeding a cluster of life-science companies that will ripple outward.
Landing Burnham took a level of cooperation among state, county and city officials that's often lacking. It also took a lot of money: Government and business leaders promised Burnham more than $310 million in cash, land, infrastructure and other perks -- at $1 million per new job, the biggest incentive package in Central Florida history.
Gov. Jeb Bush said it's worth every penny: "Let's be clear, this is not a traditional strategy. . . . It goes way beyond looking at this as 'jobs created divided by amount invested.' It doesn't fit that profile at all. What it will do is draw private-sector investment. It will draw the creative class. It will draw the dreamers and doers, the kind of people we need to sustain our communities."
The deal, announced to cheers and high-fives in Orlando and Tallahassee, was seen as vindication for a region that for years always has seemed to come in second, from its flirtation with luring a Major League Baseball team to Orlando to its failed 2003 courting of the Scripps Research Institute, another biomedical firm that chose Palm Beach County instead. Burnham will be neighbors to the area's other recent victories: a new medical school for the University of Central Florida and, likely, a Veterans Affairs hospital.
"You're talking about the remaking of Orange County," Orange Commissioner Homer Hartage said. Following Disney's opening in 1971, "we transformed from agricultural jobs to service-industry jobs, and now we're transforming into biotech. It's huge."
The announcement was doled out like a sweepstakes prize. After months of not-so-quiet competition between Orlando and Port St. Lucie, Burnham's board of directors in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, Calif., picked the burgeoning Lake Nona community in southeast Orlando for its Florida expansion.
Burnham executives informed Bush of their decision Monday night, but insisted the governor not share the information until an official announcement Wednesday. As late as Tuesday afternoon, Bush claimed he didn't know.
Burnham CEO Dr. John Reed's first calls Wednesday morning were to Port St. Lucie leaders, giving them the bad news. At about 10 a.m., Reed called Orange Mayor Rich Crotty; UCF President John Hitt; Sesh Thakkar, chief executive of Tavistock Group, Lake Nona's developer; and other local officials.
Crotty, Hitt and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer quickly caught a plane to Tallahassee so they'd be present for the announcement. County commissioners and local legislators who'd gathered in Orlando cheered and embraced as they watched a live broadcast of the news conference.
"In the 1950s, when we were growing as a community, we were able to put on first base Lockheed Martin, and that really got us started in terms of economic diversification," Crotty said. "And then in the '70s, Disney World came and we made it to second base. And five months ago today was the announcement of the UCF medical school.
"Mark this day down, because today we have hit an economic grand slam for our community."
Observers noted the deal was made possible because of cooperation between the governments of Orange County and Orlando, which are often at odds, and the business and academic worlds.
"It's a culmination of people and institutions working together and understanding there's enough credit for everybody to share. . . . Twenty years from now, we'll look back on these five months as being Disney-esque," Dyer said.
Reed predicted Burnham's new Lake Nona facility will be completed in 21 to 24 months. In the meantime, the institute's researchers will set up shop in Central Florida Research Park within nine months. They'll work in UCF's University Towers after first establishing "wet labs" necessary for Burnham's sophisticated research.
Reed said no single thing tipped the balance to Orlando.
"Orlando had an edge in a few areas," Reed said. "It has more mature infrastructure, with a broader variety of lifestyle opportunities, and the infrastructure in terms of the arts, sports and other sorts of public venues like this that are so important in creating the kind of environment that attracts a creative culture."
The Orlando International Airport also was key in its decision, Reed said, "when you're running a bicoastal operation as we will be doing."
Ultimately, Reed said one of the most compelling elements was that Burnham would be a part of Orlando's embryonic medical cluster, which appeared to mirror what started 40 years ago in San Diego. There, nearly 40,000 people conduct medical research, and the area hosts some 500 biomedical companies, he said.
Burnham will join Lake Nona's "medical city," which will boast UCF's medical school, a planned veterans hospital, the arrival of a new University of Florida 50,000-square-foot research facility being built to partner with Burnham, and other potential hospital expansions.
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