WOOSTER -- Those who've spent years working to establish a research park on the south end of Wooster believe its impact, when coupled with the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, could change the face of Northeast Ohio with the growth of the agbiosciences industry.
Recently, the board of trustees for Ohio State University concurred.
The board unanimously approved the BioHio Research Park as a university affiliate, providing local organizers with a huge boost as the Secrest Road project continues to push forward.
"We've always had the verbal support, but anytime you do anything with land or resources of Ohio State University, depending on how significant it is, you may have to go to the board of trustees," said William Ravlin, associate director of the OARDC. "Essentially, we're establishing a new company -- BioHio Research Park Corp. -- that will handle the development and implementation of the park and operate so on behalf of the university."
The BioHio Park will provide an outlet for private companies to develop commercial applications using the research from scientists at the OARDC.
Currently, there is one business up and running at the park, with the opening of quasar energy group's anaerobic digester facility on Secrest.
"This is something that's been highly desired locally," said Mike Sigg, director of administration for the city. "We believe this will dramatically streamline the process for negotiating and marketing BioHio to prospective businesses and industry. I think it's all coming to a head. It would've been great to see this five years ago, but we're just finishing up the infrastructure improvements to Secrest. I'm an impatient person who wants everything yesterday, but I do think things are coming together well."
Ravlin said one of the major questions asked by the board was how he could justify why the project would be successful.
"The answer is that we're already doing it," Ravlin said. "quasar is a great example of a company that wanted to work with us and we wanted to work with them. They started at a low level, developed some facilities, we worked jointly on projects and established a facility on site. Now they're going to be moving into our Pounden Hall incubator area that's really phase one of the research park. They're a great example of what we envision happening with numerous businesses."
Rod Crider, president of the Wayne Economic Development Council, said without the trustees' vote of confidence, BioHio essentially doesn't move ahead.
"The park is located on OSU property, so without their approval, we wouldn't be able to do anything with it," Crider said. "What this says to us is, based upon the strength of our business plan, the board agrees to allow us to use the property for these purposes. Now we can go forward with other plans of finding different ways to finance buildings. We can start doing site planning and design. This is another piece of the puzzle that's fallen into place."
With the university's blessing in writing, Ravlin said the next step would be to hire an executive director for the park.
In addition, the advisory council that had been working to construct the business plan that was presented to the trustees will be dissolved, and a new board of directors will be formed with representation from OSU, the Wooster and Northeast Ohio community and possibly even broader, Ravlin said.
With an EB5 green card regional center established as a potential funding vehicle for the construction of facilities at the park, Sigg said he anticipates the next 18 months to be spent securing financing for a large building project, that would serve as an accelerator facility with a mixture of high bay space and labs for multiple tenants.
The park will be modeled after a similar operation known as Innovation Place, located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
"We expect a lot of movement in and out and through the buildings," Sigg said. "Companies would, say, come in to research something for three years seeing how to commercialize it. Then maybe look to build their own building, which we'd also want to be in the greater Wooster area. This provides the intermediate step. ... We're very appreciative of OSU supporting the BioHio project. It's definitely a win-win for both the region and for OSU. It's a value proposition for both parties."
Reporter Bryan Schaaf can be reached at 330-287-1645 or e-mail bschaaf@the-daily-record.com.
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