Knowledge park opens buildings, has eyes on more (News)

By STEPHEN LLEWELLYN
llewellyn.stephen@dailygleaner.com

The mortar is barely dry between the bricks in two new buildings in the Greater Fredericton Knowledge Park and the organization's operators are already thinking about buildings six and seven.

"Well, we don't have anything that's inked on paper, but certainly part of my role is to continue to ... look ahead," said park general manager Larry Shaw.

"These (new) buildings are pretty much full."

He said they have months to make a decision about building.

"Probably in the 2013 time frame is when we will really get serious about breaking ground."

He made the comments after a ceremony to mark the official opening of buildings four and five.

The park was created in 1996 and the first building opened in 1998. There are five buildings with 180,000 square feet of Class A office space and 900 employees in 15 different organizations, said Shaw.

The first three buildings have 30,000 square feet of space each and the last two have 45,000 square feet of space each.

The park contributes $68.6 million to the local economy annually and it pays $900,000 a year in property taxes, he said.

"We will grow very consistently with the demand in the area, and we will be a bit like Field of Dreams," said Shaw.

"We will build some buildings ahead of schedule so that it gives a landing zone for people like Invest New Brunswick ... where they can land those (new) companies and they have a place to start up and they are not trying to solve infrastructure problems just to get a company to locate here or expand here."

Shaw said the two new buildings are almost full. He said building five - 50 Crowther Lane - is fully occupied by Radian6, Bluedrop, CAE and a centre for excellence for advanced learning and technologies, which received nearly $8 million the federal, provincial and municipal governments and the Atlantic Canada Revenue Agency. The knowledge park contributed $600,000.

In building four - 40 Crowther Lane - RIM will occupy the top two floors early in 2012, said Shaw.

"On the ground floor of that building we are working on a variety of different initiatives and, hopefully, what I would like to see us do is actually expand the entire acceleration and incubation strategy for all of the economic development issues and really focus into a very clear incubation environment," he said.

"It's available for opportunities that come along."

Overall the five buildings are more than 90 per cent full, said Shaw.

"We have a long-term plan in place that would see the knowledge park with 16 or 17 buildings," he said.

"We will continue to support the knowledge-based industry's growth and we will continue to play a very strategic part in economic development."

Shaw admitted constructing two buildings worth $14 million in the months following a major economic recession made some people nervous.

"When we broke ground some of our finances had not been put in place and we still had some leg work to do on that," he said.

"But it all came together."

Everyone understood the economy has ups and downs, and infrastructure investments need to be done with a focus beyond the current situation, said Shaw.

"We're coming out of that economic downturn very positively," he said.

The knowledge park is built on land leased from the University of New Brunswick. Gregory Kealy, provost and research vice-president (research) of UNB, said it's crucial all three levels of government continue to invest in the knowledge park and universities.

"In one fell swoop with buildings four and five, we have actually doubled the size of the park," he said.

"In these buildings we really are going to have the creme de la creme of the Canadian IT industry."

But this is just the start, said Kealy.

"If we read the newspapers on a daily basis, we know that New Brunswick continues to face serious problems," he said.

"Canada faces serious problems no matter how relatively healthy and wealthy we are."

"Unless we continue to invest in exactly these kinds of enterprises (the knowledge park and universities), we're not going to be in the game."

"Given the state of the economy and given the budgetary situations and everything else its really important, I think, that everyone understands that the only way these things can happen is if there is investment by government in infrastructure like this."