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Biomed Rounds: Bay State costs restrain
growth in life sciences |
| 10/07/2002 08:12 AM |
| By Dyke
Hendrickson |
Massachusetts is a “risen star” in the
biotech field, yet the state must improve infrastructure and become
more business-friendly if it is to remain the most desirable state
for bio and pharma company expansion.
This call to maintain
the No. 1 position in life sciences was reinforced at a recent pep
rally and take-stock gathering hosted by the Massachusetts Alliance
for Economic Development.
Nearly 160 executives, real estate
professionals and government officials turned out to discuss
“Massachusetts as a competitive location for the life-sciences
sector.”
Those who attended heard that the Boston-Cambridge
area is a magnate for new biotech companies. Indeed, Novartis, Merck
and Genzyme are among the corporations that are developing major
research facilities in the area.
But several executive
panelists warned that the Hub is close to pricing itself out of
future growth.
“Boston is a risen star, not a rising star,”
said Richard Gill, president and chief executive officer of AnVil
Inc., a life-sciences discovery company in Burlington.
“We
came here from the Philadelphia area for the expertise and the
research. It’s a good place to be, but very expensive.
“The
state will have to keep up its infrastructure and become more
business-friendly, or it could lose its edge,” Gill
said.
Most observers at the event said that the Hub offers
excellent universities, hospitals, research institutes — as well as
a highly skilled labor pool.
Yet the cost of doing business
can make an executive consider other locations.
“We thought
about moving some years ago,” said Ron Sparks, whose Smith &
Nephew Endoscopy company employs about 1,000 in Andover and
Mansfield.
“We were looking at North Carolina, and it was
tempting. Costs were much lower, and the governor even had me for
dinner and said, ‘We want your business.’ ”
Sparks said his
company decided to stay in Massachusetts because of the highly
skilled labor pool, including device makers, that he did not think
he could replicate in North Carolina.
Recent news reports
indicate that the Hub is finally getting so pricey that some
individuals and/or companies are not settling here because of
cost.
Modest single-family homes can cost more than $300,000;
a stately executive residence can list for more than $1
million.
Taxes in the Bay State are creeping north once
again, after a decade during which many fell or were
abolished.
And the fact that New England is the
slowest-growing region of the country means that valuable employees
are scarce — and subsequently well paid.
Centers that compete
with Boston include San Diego, San Francisco and the Research
Triangle in North Carolina.
Several high tech luminaries said
the Hub must be committed to improving the economic climate if it is
to keep its edge as a destination for biotech
companies.
Blair Okita, senior vice president at Genzyme
Corp., said that Massachusetts must continue to educate its students
at all levels so they can take tech-
nician and administration
jobs in a growing biotech environment.
Sparks said the
life-sciences community should prepare to work with the governor’s
office once a new leader is elected.
Most executives at the
event complained of commuter traffic and airport backup. To these
ills, there were no evident solutions.
“I was a big fan of
Hanscom,” AnVil’s Gill said. “Now I’m at Logan. So I say, ‘Air
travel sucks, big time.’ ”
Still, the consensus of the
powerful minds brought together by MAED was that the Hub is still
No. 1.
Continuing on the MAED theme, Venture capitalists, the
people with money, always are treated with deference at such
gatherings.
So when Michael Lytton, a partner with VC firm
Oxford Bioscience Partners, spoke of “hot” sectors that his company
is funding, the audience was rapt.
Lytton says hot areas are
new chemistry technology, multiple chemical-development candidates
and integrated technical platforms that clear multiple
bottlenecks.
Dyke Hendrickson reports on biotechnology and
medical devices. He can be reached at
dhendrickson@masshightech.com. |
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