City’s biotech startups need facilities

To the editor:
Cardiorobotics’ choice to locate its new facility in Massachusetts was driven by real estate concerns (“Slater Fund plants seeds for job growth,” Feb. 22, 2010). Life sciences startup companies generally prefer not to wait for space to be built out. Existing space that is well-suited for research and development use is much more attractive. There is currently very little such space in Rhode Island.
The place to build such space is Providence’s Jewelry District (which is being rebranded as the Knowledge District). Critical mass is more important in biotech than in other industries. Scientists working at research-and-development-stage enterprises want to be able to go to their local restaurant or watering hole and have some chance that the person sitting next to them has an idea what it is they do for a living. The good news is that Brown has begun contributing in a significant way to this critical mass by locating many of its life sciences researchers in the Jewelry District.
The Jewelry District has great potential for becoming a world-class life sciences cluster. As I told The Economist in an interview last year, the Jewelry District is located amongst Brown and its teaching hospitals, has large advantages with respect to (both commercial and residential) real estate prices as compared to Cambridge or the Route 128 corridor, is close to sources of life sciences venture capital, is strategically located between Boston/Cambridge and New York, and is easier to get to for many Massachusetts-based workers than is Cambridge.
The key now is creating life sciences research space in the Jewelry District that is accessible to startups.
Barrett Bready, M.D.
President & CEO, NABsys Inc.