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Monsanto Is Building an Incubator to Hatch
Plant Science Businesses
Adam Goodman
Of the Post-Dispatch Staff
Overshadowed by the yet-to-be-built Donald Danforth Plant Science Center,
another futuristic building is under construction just down the street.
The $10 million Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise is rising on
the Creve Coeur campus of Monsanto Co., just south of the site for the
Danforth center. When completed in October, the not-for-profit business
incubator is expected to house startup companies focused on plants,
biotechnology and medical sciences. While it won't have the size or
stature of the $140 million Danforth Center, the Nidus Center could
prove just as significant in determining whether the St. Louis region
will ever become a world-class center for plant sciences and biotechnology.
Where scientists at the Danforth Center will concentrate on the research
side of science, entrepreneurs at the Nidus Center (some of whom might
be those very same scientists) will tackle the business side.
The Danforth center's mission "is doing leading-edge research and carrying
the science further," explained Robert J. Calcaterra, Nidus' president
and chief executive. "Ours is commercial success."
Calcaterra, 56, was hired late last year to get the Nidus Center going.
In the last 10 years, he has founded and run business incubators in
Boulder, Colo., and Phoenix.
Nidus -- a Latin term meaning a nest or safe breeding place (usually
where bacteria or other organisms multiply in a plant or animal) --
intends to provide much more than labs, offices and a shared home for
entrepreneurs.
Calcaterra, his staff and an advisory board of dozens of volunteer
business advisers expect to get deeply involved in helping the young
companies grow. "We are like part-time CEOs in the early stages," Calcaterra
said.
In return, the companies must pay Nidus rent, fees for services and
a 4 percent ownership stake.
Although business incubators to nurture startup companies have been
around St. Louis and the rest of the nation for years, Nidus promises
to be unique. For one, it is focused -- primarily, though not exclusively
-- on plant sciences.
Secondly, this incubator is being set up by a single corporation --
Monsanto.
Monsanto is paying to build the 40,000-square-foot center on its campus.
Calcaterra and the rest of the center's staff are Monsanto employees,
as are some other Nidus board members. And Monsanto will pay most of
Nidus' operating expenses, estimated as at least $500,000 a year.
In addition to its stated commitment to helping turn St. Louis into
a magnet for plant-science research, Monsanto has much more to gain
from both the Nidus and Danforth centers.
The research and incubator centers should help attract top scientists
to the area. They can help the company spin off some technologies created
by its own employees that don't fit its core business. And it will give
the corporate giant an early view of potential businesses or technology
it might want to acquire.
Monsanto 's commitment to the project attracted Calcaterra to the job.
"This is the only place in the whole incubator industry that I've seen
like this," he said.
Yet, he promises that the center will operate independently of its
benefactor and landlord -- seeking tenants not only from Monsanto and
the Danforth Center (of which Monsanto is a major partner) but also
from area universities and from out of town.
"If it was all Monsanto spinoffs, no one else would want to come here,"
he said. "It would create a disadvantage for other companies because
they don't want to be perceived as tied to Monsanto."
Calcaterra hopes to attract up to 15 companies to the Nidus Center.
So far, he has talked with about 20 to 25 potential tenants. And he's
negotiating further with four of those, though he declined to name them.
One initial tenant he can name is Jeff Skolnick, one of the first scientists
recruited to the Danforth Center. Skolnick specializes in bioinformatics,
the science of predicting how proteins function. His team and their
500 computers will move into the Nidus Center until the Danforth Center
is completed in June 2001.
Skolnick is now working out of the Center for Emerging Technologies,
a business incubator that opened last summer on Forest Park Boulevard
in midtown St. Louis.
Like the Nidus Center, the nonprofit Center for Emerging Technologies
has been focused on high-tech startups -- primarily in the medical field.
The $6.5 million center is a joint effort of the Missouri Department
of Economic Development, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Washington
University, St. Louis University and the city of St. Louis.
The 42,000-square-foot rehabbed warehouse houses 10 businesses -- all
with connections to the nearby Washington University Medical Center
or Washington University. Officials at the center, which is 80 percent
leased, are considering doubling in size by buying an old manufacturing
building next door.
Marcia B. Mellitz, president of the center, says it will remain committed
to working with life-science companies even with the arrival of Nidus.
"We haven't begun to tap the potential that is here," she said. "It
is well beyond a couple of buildings."
Calcaterra is just as excited. He predicts that biotechnology and life
sciences will replace computers, information technology and the Internet
as the hot-growth areas in the coming years.
"In the next century, the advances in the life sciences area are going
to be the most dramatic things to occur worldwide," he said. "There's
a very dramatic impact if you can feed people who are starving."
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Head of New Nidus Center Began Career
at Monsanto
Adam Goodman
Of The Post-Dispatch
For Robert J. Calcaterra, heading the new Nidus Center for Scientific
Enterprise is a homecoming of sorts.
Calcaterra began his career at Monsanto Co. in 1965 after graduating
from the University of Nebraska with undergraduate and graduate
degrees in chemical engineering. Four years later, he left Monsanto
to get his doctorate in chemical engineering at Washington University.
Then he left St. Louis on a career path that would take him to Amoco
Oil Co., Alcoa Corp. and Adolph Coors Co.
He first got involved in business incubators in 1989 when he established
the Boulder Technology Incubator in Colorado. In its first three
years, the incubator supported 16 companies, four of which have
now sold stock to the public.
In 1992, Calcaterra founded the Arizona Technology Incubator, which
he headed until being hired to run the Nidus Center late last year.
By the time Calcaterra left, the Arizona incubator had worked with
29 companies, graduated five of them to bigger quarters elsewhere
and helped raise $50 million and create 250 new jobs in the Phoenix
area.
"We become intimately involved in the companies," Calcaterra said.
"We are partners with these people."
Calcaterra says he is looking forward to helping entrepreneurs
develop a business plan, hire and train a management team and raise
private and public money - all things he's done before.
What he hasn't ever done before is oversee the construction of
such a state-of-the-art and generous facility - a building he promises
will be one of the most environmentally conscious in the region.
From lights to autoclaves, "You can't believe the decisions you
have to make in minute details to get a building built," he said.
"The furniture is driving me nuts."
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