St. Louis firms are building science labs for the region's "BioBelt"
By Virginia Baldwin Gilbert
Of the Post-Dispatch

Civic leaders are hoping to direct the developer's mantra - "If you build it, they will come" - toward the development of laboratories and other buildings for scientific pursuits.

The aim is to offer a significant amount of wet laboratory space - where experiments are performed - as well as dry labs - where computer work is done - for both home-grown businesses and for companies relocating here.

It's all part of the campaign to turn St. Louis into a region where science, particularly biotechnology, makes money.

The effort is gathering steam. One developer has announced tentative plans to renovate an industrial building in midtown St. Louis. Another is building in St. Charles County and about to open a facility in St. Louis County.

"In many parts of the country, good science has led to good economic development," said William Danforth, former chancellor of Washington University. "Given the amount of science we have (in the region), we have come up with less economic development than we'd hoped for."

Danforth is chairman of the Coalition for Plant and Life Sciences, a committee formed by the Regional Chamber and Growth Association and Civic Progress to act on recommendations of a study released last September.

The study, by the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, suggested ways the region could establish itself as a national center for biotechnology - in image and in reality. It even coined a new marketing term for the area: the BioBelt.

Various groups have begun to establish venture capital and seed money funds. Two incubators for science business have opened in the last three years - Center for Emerging Technologies, 4041 Forest Park Boulevard in St. Louis, and the Nidus Center on the campus of Monsanto Co. in Creve Coeur.

At the same time, the region needs to be building labs for the graduates of those incubators and the successful companies created with the venture capital, civic leaders say.

"Most companies don't have the capability to build a laboratory," said Robert Calcaterra, chief executive of the Nidus Center. "It's much better for companies to lease and have someone else amortize the cost for them. A lot of places around the country will do that. If we don't, the companies will go elsewhere."

Building new labs

Lab construction is a demanding niche. Scientific buildings require specialized systems - plumbing that can handle and filter chemical wastes, ventilation systems that do not recirculate air, electrical systems with reliable backups for experiments that need constant and consistent power.

Construction methods must pay attention to the need for a super-clean environment, starting with requiring workers who pour the first concrete footings to eat lunch away from the work site and continuing through to the installation of furniture and countertops that won't accumulate dust.

A key word is control. Whether the research seeks to develop a new drug, gene therapy or plant variety, scientists want to control as many variables as they can - light, temperature, humidity, the very air surrounding the experiment. They also want to prevent contamination, whether it's a virus, a stray human skin cell or an ordinary house fly.

Lab space is expensive to build and expensive to maintain. But the return can be substantial, Calcaterra said. "People who use these labs pay a rent significantly higher than for office space," he said.

That's what Paul McKee, of McEagle Development Corp. and Paric Construction, is counting on. He plans to announce the completion of a $4 million building with 18,000 square feet of space in the Page Boulevard-Warson Road area in the next few weeks. Although he said it was premature to be specific, the building is just the beginning of his plans for St. Louis County.

McEagle is also the developer and Paric is the builder of WingHaven, a 1,200-acre development under construction in St. Charles County that includes an office-research park. In that development, McKee said, two buildings will have space suitable for research. One will cost about $20 million with 75,000 square feet; the other other will cost $14 million with 40,000 square feet.

"We are committed to high-tech space in St. Louis. It makes wonderful sense," McKee said. "We're putting our money where our mouth is."

A new kind of market

Farther east, just across the street from the Center for Emerging Technologies, the Desco Group is completing due diligence for the renovation of a 230,000-square-foot warehouse building for research/office space.

"This project is far from a sure thing," said Mark Schnuck, president of Desco. "But the indications are that we'll be moving forward."

Desco is very upfront that such a project needs government incentives - tax abatements or tax credits in particular.

Desco made its reputation developing retail centers, starting with family-owned Schnuck Markets. The project would be the firm's first foray into research-facility development.

"There is a dire need to provide the infrastructure of wet lab space in order for this biotech initiative to work in St. Louis," Schnuck said.

A national expertise

Area contractors and architects have honed their skills on academic and corporate research facilities and offer the oft-sought critical mass of workers and expertise to take development to the next level.

McCarthy Construction and architectural firm Hellmuth, Obata and Kassebaum have both established national reputations in building and designing science facilities.

McCarthy is the construction manager and HOK is the architect of record for two major projects underway: the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, an independent research facility across Olive Boulevard from Monsanto and the Nidus Center, and Sigma-Aldrich Corp.'s life science technology center in midtown St. Louis.

Building research facilities "has become quite a specialty for us in the last five years," said Bud Guest, senior vice president of McCarthy. The science building business grew out of hospital projects, he said.

McCarthy is involved in science construction projects worth more than $1 billion, including a $132 million building for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and a $380 million research lab for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

A need for flexibility

Designing lab facilities for biotech often focuses on flexibility, said Tom Goulden, project manager of the science and technology group for HOK. "It's a changing type of investigation," Goulden said. "If the research goes in a different direction or endeavor, the lab has to be able to accommodate that."

So the trend is toward open labs with fewer walls, and toward installing gas, electric and water utilities that can "plug in and unplug" as needed.

Goulden sees more demand for benchtop area for computers as "fume hoods are being replaced with more computer-generated science."

Whether the labs are in universities or corporations, clients want space for collaboration, Goulden said. "Scientists discuss what they're finding, what they're looking at. The building needs to provide space where that interaction can take place.

"We provide coffee bars, break rooms, atriums, open stairways where people communicate - where they're almost required to pass one another and where they can stop and chat."

Such considerations can be seen in the Danforth Center, where the three-story atrium is open to a glass wall on the north end, which looks out on the greenhouses and undeveloped green space.

The momentum for science seems to be building, so to speak. Calcaterra, of the Nidus Center, says it's none too soon.

"There are some potential companies that would come here, that are large enough to take a substantial amount of space - say 75,000 to 100,000 square feet within the next three years," Calcaterra said. "We know exactly what the opportunity is. If we don't start creating that space now, it won't be available when they're ready for it."

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