Posted Oct 27, 2023, 1:04 PM
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FYHA
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Houston - Wichita, KS
Posts: 3,102
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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/bus...s-18418394.php
Quote:
Texas Medical Center's new research campus opens, ushering in a new era
Marissa Luck,
Staff writer
Oct. 27, 2023
The first piece in a long-anticipated multibillion-dollar biomedical research campus opened Thursday in the Texas Medical Center, setting the stage for what could become a game-changing life sciences hub generating $5.4 billion in annual economic impact and tens of thousands jobs in Houston.
Houston has struggled to compete with larger life sciences magnets in San Francisco, Boston, San Diego and Raleigh-Durham, and the 37-acre Helix Park campus along Old Spanish Trail, a project nearly a decade in the making, represents a major milestone in helping the city gain momentum.
“When you looked at the incredible business and economic platform the state of Texas has, there was one glaring deficiency, and that is to have a massive hub for life sciences,” Gov. Greg Abbott said at the event.
Economic development officials think Helix Park will help to fill that gap, becoming a launch pad for a more mature life science industry in Texas.
The project is also the first time TMC, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Texas A&M University Health Science Center and UTHealth Houston have collaborated to build and finance a shared space to house their researchers under one roof.
“We've never really had a place where all of us felt like it was ours,” Bill McKeon, president of TMC, said in an interview. Shared laboratory spaces, plus a plethora of communal areas and coworking/office spaces, are meant to encourage researchers to mingle and collaborate.
“That's where a lot of discoveries happen, through serendipity,” McKeon said.
Helix Park is also an opportunity for commercial, for-profit firms to enter the TMC district, where they were historically prohibited. TMC officials altered covenants on the land to allow for-profit firms to operate within the Helix Park site and TMC Innovation Factory, a biotech accelerator on Holcomb Boulevard.
A few hundred people packed into the atrium of the new 250,000 square foot Collaborative Building Thursday. Outside, passersby could wander through a network of linked public parks forming the shape of helix.
“It’s amazing to see what was once a parking lot transformed into something like this. When we look around this building, when we look through this complex, we can see the future of Houston,” Dr. Peter W.T. Pisters, president of MD Anderson, said at Thursday’s event.
Across from the Collaborative Building, Beacon Capital’s 350,000-square-foot building, known as Dynamic One, is to be completed this fall. A handful of restaurants coming to Helix Park will be announced in the coming months, according to TMC.
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