Across state lines in North Carolina, another biotech hub is emerging in the town of Kannapolis in Cabarrus County north of Charlotte (see Site Selection cover story, November 2005).
   Earlier this year, David Murdock, owner of Dole Food Co., broke ground on the Core Laboratory building at the planned North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis – a $1-billion development that will house the Duke University Institute for Translational Medicine. UNC-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University are also participating in the project.
   The 311,000-sq.-ft. (28,892-sq.-m.) Core Lab is being built, equipped and funded with a $150-million donation from Murdock. The lab itself will cost $80 million.
   "This Core Lab building will be the catalyst for attracting new biotech jobs to the area and will serve as the home to a great collaboration of scientific study that will combine the intellectual power of North Carolina's incredible universities and scientists from private enterprise, working together to perhaps discover breakthroughs in health, nutrition and wellness that have the potential to change the world," said Murdock. "We are here to push back the frontiers of science."
   Upon buildout, the 350-acre (142-hectare) research campus

Bill Drohan

could be home to 100 private firms engaged in high-tech R&D in various biomedical fields.
   Bill Drohan, executive director of the Association of University Research Parks in Reston, Va., says that the Southeast is quickly establishing itself as a national and even global leader in high-tech R&D hubs.
   Drohan cites emerging R&D centers such as the Piedmont Triad Research Park in downtown Winston-Salem, CU-ICAR in Greenville, and the planned Scripps Research Institute in Palm Beach County, Fla.
   "The reputation of the South is changing," says Drohan. "Just look at what the Research Triangle Park has done for Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. Another good example is what Georgia Tech and Emory University are doing in Atlanta. In both cases, these research clusters are leveraging R&D resources into the commercialization of products."
   Other places to watch in years to come, says Drohan, are Wake Forest in North Carolina, Vanderbilt in Nashville, and the University of South Carolina Medical College in Charleston.
   "There is no doubt that the presence of university talent is a major draw for industry," Drohan says. "Look at Eli Lilly. They chose Northern Virginia a few years ago for a new insulin factory largely because of the proximity to George Mason University."