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Private sector needs to help out Slater

PBN Staff

08/24/2007

Private sector needs
to help out Slater
The state, through the Slater Technology Fund, acts as a sort of Petri dish – by providing the medium and the proper climate, it creates the ideal environment to help startup companies to grow and prosper.
Six companies currently reside at Slater’s biotechnology incubator, which was set up on Providence’s East Side four years ago. Many more have cycled through, in need of the lab equipment they need to test their ideas or the public funding that being located in the incubator directs their way.
It is not a direct moneymaker for the state – nor is it designed to be. Startups are notoriously high-risk ventures.
But it does work. EpiVax started in the incubator, moved out and has been doing excellent work on several fronts; most recently it received a half-million-dollar grant to develop a new treatment for hemophilia. The incubator helped get it off the ground.
The Slater team wants to increase its investment and move the incubator to be closer to the expanding Brown University and Lifespan in the Jewelry District. That is, after all, where the biotech action is.
Unfortunately, the state is awash in red ink and will have a hard time coming up with the needed funds, no matter how promising the long-term payoff.
The best hope, therefore, is to entice the private sector – including Brown and Lifespan – to recognize that they have a stake in the outcome of such a venture and to join with the state in the care and feeding of the next generation of biotech pioneers. Because that is where the future prosperity of the state and its citizens lies.

Small steps add up
to something big
It is not surprising that it is the big projects with the significant public financing that get all the attention.
But sometimes it is the little revitalizations that provide the spark for real change. It is too soon to know if The Liberty Elm, the newly renovated and recently opened diner in South Providence, will have that kind of impact.
Nestled next to the RIPTA bus garage among gas stations and convenience markets, it seems an unlikely place for the kind of neighborhood gathering spot that its owners envision. But sprinkled in among this hodgepodge of commercial enterprises sit homes.
The opening of The Liberty Elm is so heartening because a little investment in a changing neighborhood can have a real impact. The project did get some public financing, but only of the micro-loan variety – no tax credits or TIFs or tax stabilization agreements.
Mayor David N. Cicilline often talks about Providence’s “renaissance” extending into the neighborhoods. But he shouldn’t be the only one talking about it.
Because even though we need the big projects, in the end, the little ones that sprout one at a time add up to a vital, functioning, organic, urban whole. •

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