In the nation's breadbasket, Engler is not alone in calling for his state to be the next life sciences center. In fact, it seems as if nearly every state has some program in the works. But as budget crunches hit about 40 of those states, it will be those whose initiatives have already made some headway that will be poised to take the next step.
      Hoping to make his state's business climate as rich as the state's soil, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack is making life sciences one third of his state's three-plank approach to the New Economy. The governor has asked Dr. John Greaves, president of Kemin Industries, to serve as advisor to the Life Sciences Industry Cluster. Vilsack's budget includes $4.5 million for the entire initiative, and life sciences will have a leg up on the other sectors of advanced manufacturing and information technology through its access to $5 million in additional funds for the Plant Sciences Initiative at Iowa State University. This program aims to develop collaborative projects with life sciences industries in Iowa.
      "Iowa must build on its core strengths," said Vilsack. "This initiative will allow Iowa to build on the economic foundation of a skilled workforce, access to technology, access to financial capital, advanced physical infrastructure and a balanced regulatory and tax structure."
      Iowa's neighbor to the south has proven itself equally adept at cultivating life sciences development, with major clusters in both St. Louis and Kansas City. But those border clusters, located on opposite ends of Interstate 70 in Missouri, are part of a corridor, too, fortified by efforts at the University of Missouri, located between those cities. The school is building a $58 million life science center, and other projects will receive good support as well, thanks to an order signed last June by Gov. Bob Holden dedicating $21.5 million of the state's share of tobacco settlement money toward life sciences research. At the same time, Holden signed into law a bill expanding the state's job training programs to embrace life sciences more fully.
      That kind of initiative is music to the ears of companies and developers in the sector. In St. Louis, a partnership including the Missouri Botanical Garden, Monsanto Company, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Missouri-Columbia, Purdue University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently teamed with McCarthy Building Companies to complete the $75 million, 150,000-sq.-ft. (14,000-sq.-m.) Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, which is expected to house up to 200 scientists and their projects.
      St. Louis-based McCarthy has more than $750 million in construction contracts for laboratories throughout the U.S., including facilities for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, in Atlanta, the University of Chicago Advanced Research Building in Chicago, and Sigma-Aldrich Life Science Technology Center in St. Louis, a $57 million project.
      As the metro area grows west, so too does the biotech business. Pharmacia, which bought Chesterfield, Mo., company Monsanto in March 2000 and is spinning it off sometime in 2002, is planning to build a $40 million, 150,000-sq.-ft. (14,000-sq.-m.) animal research facility there, and is looking for up to 120,000 sq. ft. (11,150 sq. m.) of office space, too. That new development would come just after a $33 million plant under construction.
      Across the state, in Kansas City, a life sciences initiative has been under way for the past decade that has positioned the city in the upper echelon of North American cities prepared for the next wave of clustered bio-prosperity.
      But the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute, formed just three years ago, is not stopping there. By 2010, the goal is to raise research spending in the sector to $500 million annually, and to create 15,000 biomedical jobs in the greater K.C. area, which stretches significantly into the two states of Kansas and Missouri. The effort, a joint venture between the Kansas City Area Development Council and the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City, hopes to raise $300 million in local infrastructure financing, with $125 million each going toward facilities and people, and $50 million to enabling technology.
      In October 2000, Bayer located BayerValue.com in the same city where they already maintain their Agriculture Division. The new service is a business-to-business site for retailers serving the farm community, but it was only a small step in a planned $200 million expansion of manufacturing operations in northeast Kansas City. The new facilities produce Avelox, a respiratory antibiotic, and Baycol, a cholesterol-reducing drug.
      Aventis, maker of Allegra, is the parent company of Hoechst Marion Roussel, and employs around 800 people at its K.C. facility. Quintiles Transnational Corp. is a leader in pharmaceutical commercialization and the health care informatics field, and recently established its Japan Pharma Center in the Kansas City area in order to facilitate the needs of Japanese pharmaceutical companies wanting to enter the U.S. market.
      In Kansas, Overland Park-based CyDex works with major pharmaceutical manufacturers like Bristol Myers Squibb to improve the water solubility of their drugs. JRH Biosciences in Lenexa provides cell culture media, sera and growth factors to the biopharmaceutical industry.
      Three animal-related pharmaceutical corporations call the Kansas City area home. Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, with facilities in nearby Elwood, Kan., and St. Joseph, Mo., (as well as Sioux City and Ames in Iowa), makes products for cattle, swine, equine and small animals. Fort Dodge Animal Health, a division of giant American Home Products, not only makes a full line of prescription and other healthcare products for livestock, horses, swine and poultry, but was instrumental in helping to ward off the West Nile Virus epidemic in 2001 with the only FDA-approved vaccine. Finally, Pfizer Animal Health Group employs around 200 people at its pharmaceutical compounding facility in Lee's Summit.
      The presence established in Indiana by Eli Lilly in Indianapolis only promises to grow stronger in the long term. In July 2001, the pharmaceutical firm announced a $100 million, 275,000-sq.-ft. (25,550-sq.-m.) re-search facility scheduled to open in 2003. Over the next 10 years, the company will add 7,500 jobs to the Greater Indianapolis area. The company has already committed $920 million to new capital projects over the next five years.
      In the Minneapolis area, the biggest life sciences development has been the establishment of a 1 million-sq.-ft. (93,000-sq.-m.) world headquarters campus and an 80,000-sq.-ft. (7,400-sq.-m.) technology center by Medtronic, a medical device firm founded in Minneapolis more than 50 years ago. It now operates in over 260 locations worldwide and already employed 4,000 in the area at the time of groundbreaking in 1999.
      With the help of Minneapolis-based Keewaydin Real Estate Advisors, now merged with Relocation Strategies, Medtronic solidified the real estate component of its overall business strategy, including how it could help attract top talent, support R&D, and allow for future expansion. Among the headquarters' features are a 250-person cafeteria, a Total Well-Being Resource Center and Wellness Center and interactive display areas for communicating developments to the more than 5,000 scientists and physicians who visit annually. Overall Minneapolis area employment is likely to double to around 8,000 in the next 10 years.
      Keewaydin proposed a dual campus approach, with one serving as headquarters and home to the neurological business unit, materials and bioscience center and education center. The other, already established as the 800,000-sq.-ft. (74,300-sq-m.) Rice Creek Campus, is dedicated to the company's core products in the cardiac rhythm management sector.
      Keewaydin -- one of ten real estate service providers honored by Site Selection in 1999 for excellence in client service -- was crucial in not only finding a 42-acre (17-ha.) site in nearby Fridley, but helping Medtronic secure long-term state incentives for future development of the campuses. Their research revealed that the Medtronic headquarters campus alone would bring $50 million to $60 million in new tax revenue to the state. The site will allow up to 1.6 million sq. ft. (148,600 sq. m.) to be developed over the next 10 years, boosted by those long-term incentives, likely to be worth tens of millions of dollars over the next 25 years.
      "Keewaydin led us to a conclusion that we otherwise would have had great difficulty reaching with respect to our corporate headquarters," said Medtronic Director of Real Estate Donn Hagmann upon the completion of the 500,000-sq.-ft. (46,450-sq. m.) phase one in April 2001.