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A Science Park
for All?
If Connecticut really hopes to surf
the high-tech wave, it had better get in the water soon
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Business New Haven
2/9/1998
By: Susan Banfield
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Will Connecticut any time soon be thought of in the same light as California, with its Silicon Valley, or Massachusetts, with Route 128? Can we make it as a high-tech state?
Right now Connecticut seems to be teetering on the brink. The presence of high-tech industry has measurably increased here. Anyone who drives through Branford can't miss the research parks that dot the landscape.
The percentage of workers employed in high-tech industries is higher in Connecticut than in any other state. The presence of Yale is a powerful draw. Yet high-tech firms regularly complain about the difficulties of doing business here.
“It really isn't a high-tech manufacturing environment,” says Mark Levy, president of Fire-Lite Alarms in New Haven. “Connecticut has turned into a service place.”
There are currently a number of initiatives underway that are designed to help push Connecticut over the edge and make the state a major player in the high tech camp. Some are based on the premise that the problem is mostly one of image. A major campaign to transform the state's image is currently being conducted by the Connecticut Economic Resource Center (CERC).
The campaign, which began in December, is described by Tom Bradley, the CERC marketing director who heads it, as a “multi-media marketing campaign, really an image campaign.” The initiative came about when a group of software companies in Fairfield County complained that Connecticut's lack of an image as a high tech state was hurting their ability to recruit workers.
“There is a huge gap between our image and what we really are,” says Bradley. The CERC campaign is designed to close that gap through a combination of ads in national trade magazines in such fields as photonics, software and information processing; in-state print and radio ads; a major PR effort to educate reporters and editors, and to place stories on how high-tech companies are succeeding; and direct-mail marketing focused on more detailed pitches to targeted companies.
The campaign is a major effort, with an operating budget of $500,000 for the first six-month phase. Part is funded by the state, the rest from utility companies, public and private colleges and universities, and from private companies, through the Private Industry Council (PIC). A benchmark study was conducted before the campaign got underway to assess existing perceptions.
After the initial six-month phase is completed, Bradley says his staff will do research to ascertain how successful the effort has been. “Then hopefully we'll be able to get funding to continue,” he says. “It's going to have to be a multi-year campaign - at least three years. You can't change an image overnight.”
What kind of results can a state expect from an image campaign? Bradley is hopeful, citing examples of similar campaigns in other states that have met with success. “One of the best ones is Iowa's,” he explains. “They have a slogan, they call themselves 'The Smart State' and promote their high literacy rate, the fact that they have a very well-educated workforce.”
Another attempt to attract more high-tech businesses and workers by improving Connecticut's image is the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce's effort to promote the name “Science Park” as a handle for the entire region.
Science Park is the name now held by the 80-acre site near Yale, the former Winchester rifle factory, which was turned into space for new technology companies. Currently, however, high-tech business has spread much further than this small urban parcel. Bayer, Bristol-Meyers, Pfizer, and the various high-tech parks in Milford and Branford are all sites of significant research and development.
“It's important for people to see the huge impact Yale and these companies have had,” says chamber President Matthew Nemerson. “We're talking hundreds of employees, millions of dollars.” Nemerson's concept is to rename each park or lab: “Science Park - Bayer Campus,” “Science Park - Milford Technical Campus,” etc.
Nemerson also envisions new signage on I-95 and other major roads, common stationery, linked Web sites. “This would create a physical place,” he says. Greater New Haven is comparable to Silicon Valley in size. “Why not have this all be seen as a successful place?” Nemerson challenges.
While CERC and the New Haven chamber seek to attract more high-tech businesses and workers by means of an image upgrade, others maintain that more substantial assistance is required. Since its founding 20 months ago, the Regional Growth Partnership has worked to “bring together the public and private sectors in a cooperative joint effort to address issues of a regulatory nature that would enhance the climate for doing business” in the region and would “provide an attractive place for investment,” according to executive director Everett Shaw.
Shaw is particularly concerned about helping the area's growing biotechnology business.
“Biotechnology is truly a growth industry for this region,” Shaw maintains. “We are one of the three strongest states in resources for biotechnology.” But, he adds, “we're not even among the top 20 in numbers of firms and jobs.”
Why the gap? Shaw believes it is due to a lack of state support - principally to help with the creation of laboratory space. “We have the producers of ideas. What is needed is to be able to get these ideas into labs.”
Shaw points out that in places such as Baltimore or Cambridge lab space is advertised all the time. This is not the case in Connecticut. “Lab space is so expensive,” says Shaw. “You must create enough space - and the state must be involved.
“The major competitors for this industry are other states,” Shaw explains. “If we're going to be one of the primary states - and we should be - it's going to require substantial and aggressive state support.”
The state of Maryland, for example, has invested in the creation of 300,000 square feet of new lab space - more than exists in all of Connecticut.
Shaw, who also sits on the governor's Biotechnology Implementation Team, is currently recommending several measures for support of biotechnology. One of these is the creation of a biotech institute, including office space, a conference center, and 10,000 square feet of lab space to lease to start-up companies.
Shaw is also pushing for the appropriation of $50 million to support the research of new biotech firms. He sees the funds as mainly being used to pay for costly lab space while new companies develop marketable ideas.
The governor's office is presently mulling these and other proposals and is due to make recommendations of its own presently. Shaw hopes the governor's recommendations will parallel his own. “Biotechnology offers us as much an opportunity going into the next century as the industrial revolution did in the last century. We've just got to step up to the line.”
”The schools just aren't producing the workers we need,” maintains Fire-Lite's Mark Levy. He is not alone in this complaint.
The state's colleges and universities are another group with concrete and comprehensive plans for producing the needed workers and for helping in other ways to make Connecticut more attractive to high-tech employers.
Bruce Leslie, chancellor of the state's community and technical colleges, acknowledges the problem. “Only eight percent of our students major in technical fields,” he explains. “In the late '80s and early '90s a lot of technology programs were eliminated because so few were going into them.”
Currently the state's community and technical colleges are working to reinstate many of these programs, as well as add new ones. In Fairfield County, for example, where there is a heavy concentration of computer firms, Norwalk Community College, Housatonic Community College and UConn/Stamford are offering a new program to develop programmers and other computer specialists.
In Hartford, the governor just announced that $500,000 would be invested in a new program called the Millennium Project, whose aim is the development of a precision manufacturing program. There are numerous smaller programs as well. Last year, Leslie says, 35 new technical programs were added at state schools, and 60 others were modified.
In addition, Leslie notes, “we're trying to create strategies to promote technical programs for students. There will be several initiatives going to the legislature over the next few years.”
Leslie would also like to see the schools work more closely with businesses. Many firms relocate to states such as North Carolina or Texas, he says, because these states have a fund that allows schools to provide free support training for companies that are expanding. Connecticut schools, because they lack such resources, have to charge for such training. Leslie is seeking the creation of a similar fund here.
Another project that would create a closer partnership between schools and businesses for the promotion of high-tech industry is the creation of what Leslie calls an “advanced technology center.” The center would be patterned after one erected at Clackarmus Community College in Wilsonville, Ore., in 1990.
It would house the latest in high-tech equipment, loaned by local suppliers and manufacturers. Local companies would have access to this state-of-the-art equipment and be trained in its use at a minimal cost. The equipment would also be made available to students at local high schools and technical colleges.
Currently the CCTC system is working with a number of public, quasi-public and private business groups to secure funding and select a site for the center. Vacated buildings at Allied Signal in Stratford are being considered.
By and large, the initiatives being proposed by CERC, Shaw, Nemerson, Leslie and others seem to be in line with what high-tech companies themselves are calling for.
Harry H. Penner Jr., president of Neurogen Corp., believes that “continuing state support in the way of helping to enhance the state's image as a tech center” will prove one of the most important elements in any plan to increase high-tech business in Connecticut. He applauds CERC's efforts, and in fact hopes the campaign will receive the funding it needs to continue beyond this year. “This isn't a one-year thing,” Penner says. “You can't do this in a single year.”
“The ad campaign sounds nice, but where is the substance behind it?” asks Mark Levy. Most high-tech companies, like Fire-Lite, are mainly interested in more concrete initiatives. Shaw's proposals meet with kudos from many local biotech firms.
“Connecticut has to wake up to the fact that this is a very competitive field,” says Gualberto Ruano, CEO of Genaissance. “I get mail from Virginia, California, Maryland. We have to be aggressive about attracting biotech.”
“Other states have put into place mechanisms that have helped companies,” adds Tom Mizelle, vice president of operations at Vion Pharmaceuticals.
“There are benefits beyond the region,” adds Debra Pasquale, president of Connecticut United for Research Excellence (CURE), whose members include a number of biotech firms. “There are truly benefits for the whole state.”
Lack of lab space is the main concern of most biotech firms. “If there is a key component that is lacking in Connecticut, it's the lack of space or mechanisms through which such space could be developed,” says David Keiser, CEO of Alexion Pharmaceuticals.
Vion, Genaissance, Alexion - all acknowledge that they would never have made it had it not been for their luck in getting subsidized start-up lab space in Science Park. They realize that many other start-up firms are not so lucky.
Both the proposed biotech center and the $50 million fund are attractive proposals to such companies, the former more so to assist incubator firms, the latter to growing companies who need to find larger quarters.
“Space will continue to be the No. 1 issue for us,” says Vion's Mizelle. “We started out in incubator space in Science Park. We're now over 30 employees. In a few years, what kind of space will be available? Where will it be?”
The thought of using the company's profits to build a large lab is not a happy one. “We want to invest capital in R&D, not real estate,” Mizelle says. The $50 million biotech fund would be an ideal solution in such a case.
Depending on state funding, having state involvement in their businesses does not seem to be a major concern to those calling for more state support. It's “no problem,” says Mizelle. In fact, maintains Genaissance's Ruano, “$1 million to $2 million in investment capital would be a tremendous lure” to attract new businesses. Thirty percent of Genaissance's funding currently comes from Connecticut Innovations Inc. (CII), funded by the state.
Other high-tech firms would like to see similar proposals for making venture capital available to non-biotech companies.
“A small company needs that kind of seed funding in order to justify work on a project,” says John Judd, president of Vibrametrics, a Hamden firm specializing in the manufacture of predictive sensors and systems. “We've got to have risk capital available,” adds Les Trachtman, president and CEO of the software firm Metaserver. “Venture capital companies are not interested in investing in software companies [in this state]. They don't think we'll attract top level management.”
Trachtman, like Ruano, also has “absolutely no problem” with depending on state funds. He does feel, however, that the money should come with fewer strings attached than is currently the case with CII. “It should be run by venture capitalists, managed like venture capital.”
High-tech firms are also calling for the kinds of proposals the state's schools are beginning to make. “We need the higher education system to take an active role,” says Metaserver's Trachtman. “The schools are doing nothing - just standing around and watching. We need programs fostering commercial types of skills, like in Boston, San Francisco.”
“We have numerous openings for software engineers,” adds Fire-Lite's Levy. “We advertise heavily. The responses are very, very limited.”
Why? “The schools just aren't producing the people we need,” he says. “State university systems in states like California and Florida specialize more in the sciences.”
Neurogen's Penner calls for “more investment in the technical colleges and the state university system - make sure there's enough of a budget there for the schools to address the needs.” He adds, “All the states that have been successful with biotech have done this.”
Even Chancellor Leslie's proposal for a technology center has met with approval in some quarters. Vibrametrics' Judd believes a technology center would be helpful. Judd would especially like to see “centralized facilities for small companies to hold technical meetings, do videoconferencing.” For example, he says he would benefit from bringing together the many companies in the state that, like his own, are focused on predictive maintenance.
Since the plans being proposed by public and quasi-public groups around the state seem to be in line with what high tech companies themselves say is needed, now we can only hope that the governor and the legislature listen.
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