Tech Park Takes Off
Charleston Gazette-Mail
Sunday, February 19, 2006
By Jennifer Ginsberg
Some vacant laboratories inside the South Charleston Technology Park are seeing a flurry of new tenants, equipment and projects.
Professional scientists and college students will soon work together in South Charleston on various life science projects, including isolating genes that help breeders make better crop and plant varieties. Six academic and research staff members are moving into five labs in building 701.
Union Carbide and then Dow researchers once toiled over chemicals and their applications in these same laboratories.
Earlier this year, West Virginia State University and the Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research and Innovation Center formed a partnership to bring the students and researchers to the park. Their agreement lets them each use the other’s lab space.
The partnership is another example of the meshing of public and private companies and universities that’s going on at the nearly 900,000-square-foot park that once employed 1,500 or more people.
“This did not exist seven year ago. It’s a tremendous sign of progress in the Kanawha Valley,” said Mark Chatfield, WVSU’s associate director of research and land grant programs.
The center’s first research lab was officially dedicated in 1949. The facility became a full-scale center in 1959 after two large development labs and an engineering building were added, according to Dow’s Web site.
Dow bought Union Carbide in 2001 and turned the tech center into an open campus in 2003 as a way to attract companies to open their businesses there. Cars can now come and go through the park, where security guards once stopped them. There’s a guard in each building and people much have a badge to enter them, said Dow spokeswoman Nikki Orcutt.
Now, more than 10 separate commercial and educational entities call the center home. About 70 percent of the park’s total square footage is being used and around 700 people work in the park, said Allan Fowler, Dow’s vice president for West Virginia operations.
Battelle, a global science and technology nonprofit organization that develops and commercializes technology and manages laboratories for customers, opened a research office in the technology park earlier this year.
The Columbus, Ohio-headquartered organization plans to work with the region’s Chemical Alliance Zone, area chemical companies and universities.
The partnership will give local companies access to technologies being developed in Battelle’s five national laboratories. Battelle also wants to team up with area groups to work on chemical and environmental technologies, which include projects such as making an environmentally friendly de-icing fluid for airplanes, company officials said recently.
Marshall University and West Virginia University have facilities at the park. WVU Tech’s engineering program is slated to move there.
Those involved with the projects see them as a way to reinvigorate a once robust research and technology park and chemical industry that thrived within the Kanawha Valley.
“I think our community will see rapid change in our technology community in the next couple of years,” said Keith Pauley, MATRIC’s president and CEO.
MATRIC began in 2003 and has been at the tech park since January 2005. The organization is working on 20 competitive research contracts worth $6.8 million, Pauley said. The group also employs 28 people. One of its goals is to collaborate with universities to increase everyone’s research and development capacity, Pauley said.
The MATRIC/WVSU partnership is important for the community, said Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha.
“It is showing how that the facilities at the Dow Technical Center can help engage multiple institutions in the effort of productive research. Part of that is focused on commercializing emerging technologies,” he said.
Chatfield sees the MATRIC/WVSU partnership as a way to help his program grow. Three years ago, there wasn’t a biotechnology graduate program. The first two students graduated from the program in December and about 20 others are now going through the program, he said.
The tech park labs will be available to chemistry, biology and biotechnology students if they’re involved in the genomics, plant genetics, biochemistry and applied microbiology projects that are going on in the labs.
So far, the students and researchers are happy with their new, larger work areas.
“I’m sure our university and students will benefit with this collaboration. Students will get exposure to high tech groups [and there will be] more focus on industry and jobs,” said Umesh Reddy, an assistant professor of biology and a full-time scientist who will use the facility.
Now, the lab workers are in the midst of moving their supplies in from Institute. The plant genome lab and bioreactor should open soon. The DNA sequencer, which researchers will use to isolate genes to help breeders make better crop and plant varieties, is expected to arrive in a couple of months.
Pauley envisions the park filling up with “hundreds, if not thousands of scientists” in the next five to 10 years.
“We’re at the point, it’s really taking off,” Pauley said. “New people are in the facility, [working] on new projects. It’s fun to be there and see it happen.”
To contact staff writer Jennifer Ginsberg, use e-mail or call 348-5195.