Florida tech concept may come to Abq
Plan meant to attract high-paying jobs to city
Katie Kim
KRQE News 13
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - A University of Florida concept that aims to bring university inventions to market and help new graduates with innovative ideas could be coming soon to Albuquerque.
University of New Mexico President Robert Frank said it's up to UNM to spearhead high-paying job growth in Albuquerque. Albuquerque Mayor R.J. Berry agreed, saying with federal funding to New Mexico's labs and air force bases in jeopardy, the need for home-grown jobs has never been more important.
"New Mexico is at a crossroads," Berry said. "Frankly, if we keep doing things they way we've been doing them for the last two, three, four decades, we're going to fall behind."
Like Albuquerque, graduates were leaving Gainesville in droves – with degrees in hand – because of a lack of high-paying jobs in the city.
So UF came up with a concept known as “Innovation Square,” a 40-acre development near the university campus in Gainesville that eventually will include office space, apartments and stores. Currently, however, the project consists of a remodeled hospital called “The Hub” that contains office and lab space.
One of the project’s main goals is to attract new startup companies – many of which will hopefully be headed by UF graduates. At the Hub, those companies have access to many of the resources they need, including mentoring, accounting, legal services and even venture capitalists, said Ed Poppell, a former UF vice president.
"They don't need to be worrying about payroll, taxes, employment, hiring and firing," Poppell said. "We'll help them with that. We'll teach them how to do that. They need to focus on their business plan."
Because UF is one of the largest universities in the country with more than $700 million in annual research funding, one of the project’s other main goals is to bring some of the 300 or so yearly inventions churned out by the school’s scientists to market, he said.
"We want to commercialize as many as those inventions and discoveries and take those to the retail level, the business level, to grow jobs," Poppell said.
The Hub has been open about a year and already 30 companies have moved in. Next to the Hub, an eight-story building with more office space will open next year, then luxury apartments for workers and eventually a grocery store and hotel.
Poppell said the activity in Gainesville has also attracted Mindtree, a software company from India, to relocate and bring close to 1,000 jobs to the city.
Adding to the project’s appeal to Albuquerque leaders, Innovation Square has been built solely with money from the private sector, though Berry said he’d be willing to invest taxpayer money in it.
The early success of Innovation Square has New Mexico leaders very interested, especially Frank, who at one time served as a dean at UF. Frank, Berry and other leaders toured the Florida project last month, and have been holding meetings to discuss the project's next steps.
"With Sandia (Labs), the Air Force Research Lab and then you got what the university does, we're all here in one place,” Frank said. “Very few cities in America have that.”
UNM paid for most of the Florida trip, which cost about $20,000 for hotel and airfare for the 18 people who went.
"We're here creating knowledge, things that have never happened before, the highest level, the cutting edge kinds of things that have never been invented and these are very high paying jobs come out," Frank said.
What Albuquerque's version of Innovation Square will look like is still an idea at this point, but in the next few months, leaders said the vision will become clearer. One thing most agree on, however, is that the project must be close to UNM. The development will likely be located within a few miles from the university, Frank said.
"We can create a greater Albuquerque that's more than we ever had before," Frank said.
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