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With some fanfare, New York State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver announced on October 2 that the state would award $5 million to launch the Lower Manhattan Bioscience Project, a public/private initiative intent on providing New York City bioscience with a downtown address.Many observers quickly noted that the sum was somewhat meager when compared to the project's estimated $90 million price tag, and in particular when compared to the $110 million in state discretionary funding recently allotted to building a life sciences center in Buffalo, located in far northwestern New York, $20 million awarded in late September to foster biotechnology in upstate Syracuse, and $48 million granted at the same time to Long Island biotech.Some Lower Manhattan Bioscience Project supporters believe the plan for a downtown bioscience center was short-changed because governor Pataki and state legislators saw fit to "politicize the distribution process," according to Jonathan Bowles, Research Director at the Center for an Urban Future, a New York City-based policy think tank. The lion's share of voter constituencies important to winning upcoming elections do not dwell in the five boroughs of New York City, Bowles noted.However, prominent New York City bioscience advocates say the state's largest city is already a center of biomedical research, whose research institutions are collectively the second largest recipient of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in the country, the city already has more biotechnology companies than any other region of the state, and a biotechnology center in lower Manhattan is needed help to make the city a recognized biotech hub like Boston or San Francisco.Former NIH director and Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus, president and CEO of Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), has expressed strong support for the lower Manhattan bioscience center and for developing other biotech centers across the city. In a 24 September New York Times opinion editorial, Varmus described his frustration at the "near absence of biotechnology" in the Big Apple, but wrote, "I think the lack of a strong biotech industry here is largely a matter of historical accident and misperception…. Yet the prospects for biotechnology here could change, rapidly and dramatically, if we decided to promote our many strengths."The New York City Bioscience Initiative, organizer of the Lower Manhattan Bioscience Project, is comprised of medical and research institutions, including MSKCC, venture capitalists, and city economic development agencies. Organizers and supporters believe the downtown bioscience center is essential to foster biotech start-ups, which have traditionally avoided New York City because of its high commercial real estate prices. The Lower Manhattan Bioscience Project proposes to convert 300,000 square feet of commercial space in or near the city's financial district into suitable digs for both biotechnology start-ups and more established companies. Manhattan's financial district has suffered increasing commercial vacancy rates due to decades of gradual migration by financial firms away from Wall Street, and now that New York City and State are proposing to dramatically reinvent the area as part of rebuilding the World Trade Center site, a downtown location seems even more propitious for a new biotech initiative, supporters say. While the proposed lower Manhattan center awaits additional funding, a quick subway ride away, another project supported by the New York City Bioscience Initiative is scheduled to open in March. The Advanced Biotechnology Incubator at the State University's (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, will provide 50,000 square-feet of space, room for 30 companies, to young and mature biotech firms.

Snub for NYC biotech hub

Plan for downtown bioscience center popular with all but state legislators.

Oct 8, 2002

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