Life On the Mississippi

Yes, that sub-four-hour drive between Missouri's largest metros is just short enough to bring both cities into a company's sights, punctuated at its midpoint by the growing city of Columbia, home to the University of Missouri. At MasterCard's St. Louis campus, nearly 2,200 people process card transactions for customers around the world. In the meantime, project transactions for worldwide companies are taking place in the city as well.
        After growing exponentially in late 2001 through the acquisition of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Gutmann Plastics, pharmaceutical container manufacturer Alpha Packaging, located in nearby Overland, Mo., completed an $11-million expansion to 211,000 sq. ft. (19,602 sq. m.). Dan Creston, Alpha's vice president and general manager, says the company was not really looking beyond the area, but was looking for some key elements that the new site, just around the corner, was able to provide.

Signs of Life From all indications, the office doors of venture capitalists are wide open to Missouri prospects. Largely due to a $66-million infusion in Chesterfield-based NuVox Communications, the state led the U.S. in venture capital investment during the third quarter of 2002 with more than $80 million invested.         And it was no accident that the majority of the rest of that money was poured into life sciences firms, as both St. Louis and Kansas City vie to become one of those coveted bio hotspots.         Across the state, a network of new life sciences projects is beginning to coalesce into a tangible whole. Gov. Bob Holden has pledged state assistance in launching a $30-million health sciences building at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, as well as for the construction of a separate Kansas City Center for Technology.         "The new technology center would serve as an innovation center to turn our research into jobs and economic prosperity," he said last fall. "It will provide badly needed wet lab space and a business environment to link the results of our world class research to marketable products."         The projects will build on the momentum of other centers, old and new, including the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City and the Danforth Plant and Life Sciences Center, Nidus Center and Center for Emerging Technologies in St. Louis. A new life sciences building is also under construction in Columbia, home to the University of Missouri.         Elsewhere in K.C., private investment by healthcare corporations continues to keep pace. Longstanding North Kansas City stalwart Cerner Corp., a healthcare information management system company, has expanded at a rate of 25 percent since it began in 1979, and shows no signs of stopping. The latest manifestation is a new 132,000-sq.-ft. (12,263-sq.-m.) headquarters, just the first phase of an aggressive $67.8-million expansion plan that is expected to create the space to accommodate an additional 1,500 associates. For its demonstrated commitment to the region and its people, the company earned both the 2002 Governor's Achievement Award and the Business Attraction and Expansion Award from Missouri Gov. Bob Holden.

        "We put in a 30-foot-high [9-m.-high] distribution center, so heavy power and access to the electrical grid were important," he says. "The incentive for us was getting under one roof, buying materials by rail, and being more efficient electrical-wise."
        Creston says that being in St. Louis already put the company at an advantage in hooking up with a technology-savvy work force, which he calls hard to come by. Unfortunately, so were state and county low-cost financing incentives, which the company didn't quite qualify for in the end. Yet Creston, who has seen his company go from four facilities to one, is happy with the results, help or no help: he estimates the move will save the company some $500,000 a year.
        "The incentive was to get more efficient," he says. "We weren't shopping it to the 'nth' degree, just looking for a continuation of our momentum."
        If the state is to experience a similar rush of success, says Creston, it may pay to heed a tried-and true business axiom: paying attention to retention.
        "Attracting business from out of state is tough," he says. "The best source of new sales is existing customers -- take that approach and they'll thrive more by being there. The best source for me would be a friend saying 'What a great environment.'"
        Alpha may be first, but it's not the last to expand in Overland.
        Apria Healthcare, a provider of home respiratory therapy, home infusion therapy and home medical equipment services, is expanding its local billing center, creating 28 new jobs.
        The healthcare beat goes on in a city that primes the pump in the life sciences sector. One of its leading champions is Wyeth BioPharma, which held a groundbreaking at its 350-employee campus on April 12, 2002. It was the start of a second phase of growth that will see the firm's employee roster climb to 600 at the $230-million, 250,000-sq.-ft. (23,225-sq.-m.) production facility.
        The plant, which makes ReFacto, a recombinant product for the treatment of hemophilia A, just received FDA approval. The company has also expanded recently at another plant that fills and packages the drug, in Algete, Spain. At the time of the groundbreaking last spring, ReFacto had just been cleared by the European Commission, but had yet to be approved in the U.S.