PROVIDENCE – On May 14, a week before the news broke that Wexford Science & Technology of Baltimore, a subsidiary of BioMed Realty Trust Inc. in San Diego, in partnership with CV Properties LLC, had submitted a plan to the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission to build a 1-million-square-foot life sciences complex, Richard Horan, senior managing partner at Slater Technology Fund, in a very prescient reading of the economic tea leaves, actually foretold the development.

The occasion was a gathering of stakeholders as part the City of Providence Cluster Strategy effort, focused on the biomedical industry sector, which was being held at Brown University. The session was being facilitated by Rich Overmoyer, a consultant with the Pittsburgh-based Fourth Economy.

Horan spoke about the need for a big idea, and suggested that it might be a “biopark” on the former Route 195 land.

By itself, Brown University, Horan continued, didn’t have the resources to pursue such an undertaking. Instead, Horan said, Providence and Rhode Island needed to look to one of the big national commercial real estate developers to manage the development, and then bring in the universities as potential partners with them.

Russell Carey, the executive vice president for planning and policy for Brown University, who works closely with Brown University President Christina H. Paxson, was sitting just down the table from Horan, and he did not offer any comments on what Horan suggested, keeping his thoughts to himself, a good poker player, no doubt.

Connecting the dots
Despite his uncanny prediction, Horan said he was surprised when ConvergenceRI sent him the news announcing the proposed biopark, broken by WPRI’s Ted Nesi on May 20.

When asked to put the proposed development in context of Rhode Island’s emerging innovation economy and the growing traction of its biomedical industry, Horan offered an optimistic view of the landscape and its transition from aspirations to a brick-and-mortar reality.

“Thank goodness for the confidence shown by Richard Galvin [president and founder of CV Properties] and his partners at Biomed/Wexford to propose such a development,” Horan wrote to ConvergenceRI. “It is a biotech park – much more so than a ballpark – that is going to facilitate the growth in high-value, high-wage jobs that are so badly needed in our economy here in Rhode Island.”

Better still, Horan continued, “Such a development will trade upon one of the most robust sectors of economic growth in our region – the biomedical research enterprise anchored by Boston/Cambridge, unequalled anywhere in the world, extending southward along the Northeast Corridor in which we find ourselves advantageously located.”

Horan said that praise was due Gov. Gina Raimondo, whom he said first called for such an innovation campus, such as this project might become, when she launched her gubernatorial campaign. 

In similar vein, Horan also lauded Brown University President Christina Paxson, whom he said had articulated a clear vision in her recent op-ed in The Providence Journal, about the role that Brown has played – and will continue to play – through its Jewelry District alliances in boosting Rhode Island.

“When leaders such as these commit to visions with such promise,” Horan continued, “investors are emboldened to rally the resources which are needed to effect such transformational change.”

Particularly exciting, Horan said, “is the scale of what is envisioned for the biotech park in Providence. In proposing up to a million square feet of development, we are talking about a project comparable in size to those undertaken by Vertex Pharmaceuticals in their relocation to the Fan Pier section of Boston, or the complex under construction in downtown New Haven, to be anchored by Alexion Pharmaceuticals.”

The focus on prospective tenants will be the critical issue going forward in order to accelerate the pace of the development, Horan added. “As has occurred both to our north and south, cultivating home-grown start-ups which marshal the resources to achieve spectacular success are an important part of the equation.”

Details, details, details
Plans for the new Wexford-CV proposed development are said to combine a hotel, residential housing, retail space, lab space, and academic research facilities.

The proposed development was quickly embraced by Gov. Gina Raimondo as part of her economic development vision, saying it was “exactly the vision” she had outlined to bring together universities and companies on an innovation campus in order to jump start the state’s economy, according to a story by Kate Bramson in The Providence Journal.

Yet, back when candidate Raimondo held a news conference on July 28, 2014, to tout the concept of an innovation campus, it wasn’t “exactly” the same vision. “The Rhode Island Innovation Institute will be an applied research campus, focused on innovation in advanced manufacturing,” she said.

Raimondo’s innovation campus was then tied to the concept of advanced manufacturing, as her spokeswoman explained to ConvergenceRI. “To make Rhode Island a destination for manufacturing jobs, we need to be a leader in innovation,” the spokeswoman said. [See link below to ConvergenceRI story.]

And, as Bramson pointed out in her story, since her campaign, Raimondo had spoken about using the former 195 land as a place to train workers with new skills, including in manufacturing. Raimondo admitted that the current Wexford-CV Properties proposal didn’t appear to include a job-training component, saying: “But it doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be,” according to Bramson’s story.

In an interview with Ted Nesi, CV Properties’ Galvin said that the origins of the project predated the current governor. “Obviously, the [former] 195 land has been around for a couple of years,” Galvin said. “My hat is tipped to the previous group on the 195 Commission, they did a lot of heavy lifting to get the pieces in place,” according to Nesi’s story. “Providence has this unique opportunity because of these unique institutions – and I include RISD, Johnson & Wales, Lifespan and Care New England, as well as Brown and URI and others,” Galvin continued. “You have the availability of the land, you have the right political leadership, you have this location along the Northeast corridor.”

As President John F. Kennedy once said, “Victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan.”

Clearly, in Rhode Island’s economic struggle, the good news of a potential biopark development on the former Route 195 land is a victory that all of Rhode Island’s political leaders will claim rightful parentage for.