Pennsylvania rolls out red carpet for high-tech life-sciences firms like Merck, Cellomics and others; governor says building infrastructure is the key.

W

hen Cellomics Inc. announced on May 8 that it would take up 150,000 sq. ft. (13,950 sq. m.) of new speculative office space at Bridgeside Point in the Pittsburgh Tech Center, the deal signaled more than a single corporate expansion. It confirmed what many in Pennsylvania already suspected: The state is rapidly becoming a bio-technology and pharmaceutical industry hub for the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.
      "Bridgeside Point's location, at the foot of Hot Metal Bridge on the site of an old steel mill, signals a new era for the Pittsburgh economy," says Jeff Schulz, senior vice president of Grubb & Ellis in Pittsburgh. "New technology businesses are building on the old economy's business sites of the past."
      In the case of Cellomics, a Harmar biotechnology firm, the space will be used to analyze the success rate of pharmaceutical products. The drug-testing company plans to use the space as a biotech research and office center. Currently employing 160 workers at the site, Cellomics expects to expand to 400 within three years.
      Cellomics is far from alone in transforming the Quaker State's economy from steel mill-dependent manufacturing into knowledge-and-research-based industry. The growing list of expanding companies in Pennsylvania reads like a Who's Who of biotech, information technology, telecommunications and financial services. Companies like Merck, VerticalNet, Marconi and Vanguard are not only changing the character of the state's economy; they are changing the way corporate real estate executives and site selection consultants view places like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Lancaster, Reading, Harrisburg, Allentown and State College, Pa.
      When the Vanguard Group announced last year that it would expand its world headquarters in Malvern in Chester County by US$500 million and 6,000 jobs, CEO Jack Brennan said that two things sealed the deal for Southeast-ern Pennsylvania -- a $55 million incentives package and the area's work force.
      "Through Gov. (Tom) Ridge's leadership and his personal commitment to our expansion plans, we have been able to accomplish our primary objective: reinforcing to Chester County, as well as to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, that we are committed to the area and to growing here for years to come," Brennan noted at the press conference for the nation's second-largest mutual-fund firm. He added that Vanguard selected the site because it was "the most attractive to us because of its location -- particularly its proximity to our Malvern campus (where the company already employs 8,200 people) -- and its access to the terrific labor pool that exists in the Delaware Valley."
      While the Vanguard project represents the largest job-creating announcement in Pennsylvania since 1976, many other large projects came to the state within the past year. Among the biggest:

• Marconi Communications' 1,000 new jobs in Allegheny County.
• Corning's 1,000 new jobs in Lackawanna County.
• CIGNA's 1,200 new jobs in Lackawanna County.
• VerticalNet's 1,000 new jobs in Horsham near Phila-delphia.
• Merck & Co.'s 3,000 new jobs in Montgomery County.