The major biotech clusters are big lures for continued development. Washington State's Puget Sound has drawn deeply on the region's research institutions as one of the major biotech clusters has developed.
      One of the latest projects is a $60-million commercial manufacturing center being developed by Berlex in South Snohomish County. Berlex, the U.S. affiliate of Germany's Schering AG, will use the site to manufacture Leukin, a biopharmaceutical used to treat leukemia, and which has a potential new market in the treatment of Crohn's disease. The company is currently producing Leukine at a leased facility in Washington.

Swiss firm Roche Group is embarking on a major expansion in Europe, including a new facility at its complex in Penzberg, Germany.

      Berlex's site search was truly global, scanning the offshore biotech centers of Puerto Rico, Ireland and Singapore, plus several dozen locations along the U.S. west coast. The company sent RFPs to communities in California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia and received information from about 40.
      John Daigneault, Berlex's director of engineering, was a member of a group tasked with vetting the North American candidates. That involved establishing "must" criteria which included:

• A minimum of 15 acres (six hectares), appropriately zoned and outside of any FEMA 100-year flood plain;
• Adequate utility capacity to meet demands;
• Within a 90-minute drive of an international airport.

      "We ran all of the sites through those must criteria, working with Global Location Strategies [a Fluor division]," Daigneault says. "They visited three dozen sites. Based on their visits and the data they collected, we ran it through our criteria and narrowed the list to 10 or 12 sites."
      One of the sites Berlex considered was in Richmond, Calif., near the company's existing facility where a further build-out was being contemplated. Daigneault says high utility costs and permitting issues sank that concept.
      Daigneault and the local Washington management team visited the final dozen sites and met with local officials and developers.

Construction has resumed on Biogen Idec's facility in Hillerod, Denmark. The project had taken a breather since Biogen and IDEC Pharmaceuticals merged in November 2003. Fredericksborg Castle is in the background.

      "Our final site was the best scoring site in all of the analysis we performed. We didn't feel comfortable entering into negotiations with just one primary site identified. So, we selected three primary sites and commenced negotiations for two."
      During the process, Schering corporate management in Germany decided to take a phased approach to the project and spread its investment out based on certain business milestones, Daigneault said. The project will be built in two phases. Construction of the first, a 90,000-sq.-ft. (8,360-sq.-m.) building, is under way and will become operational in 2006. The company has not released a timetable or an investment amount for the second phase. These two phases will use 10 of the site's 16 acres (four of 6.5 hectares), with the remaining land available for future growth.
      "Developing the project in phases did not lend itself well to locations remote from our existing operations in Washington," Daigneault says. "Our work force there is of primary importance." In fact, Berlex eschewed incentives offered by Oregon and spurned a more favorable wage situation in British Columbia in order to maintain its current group of employees.
      In the end, Daigneault says no state or local incentives were involved in the decision. Berlex will receive no state incentives other than the fact that it will be eligible for a tax credit on equipment, which is available to any manufacturer.
      Berlex employs 110 at its Leukine manufacturing site in Washington. The new facility will add 70. Phase two will double capacity and allow for consolidation of the leased operation into the new complex.
      "Right now, we are formulating a staffing plan for the new facility," Daigneault said. "The ability to attract qualified staff from the Seattle area is attractive to us. We hope to benefit from being amongst similar companies."
      Berlex spokeswoman Cathy Keck Anderson says the company is working with the state to craft a strategy to encourage biotech firms to stay and grow in Washington as they commercialize their products.