True or False?

The Image Bank/Jim Doberma 1. New York City is too expensive a place to live. 2. There aren't enough life scientists in New York. 3. There's not enough commercial lab space. 4. Any available lab space is too expensive. 5. There's too much crime. 6. New Yorkers are rude. 7. It's challenging starting a biotech company in the city. 8. New York's schools make it a bad place to raise a family. 9. New York is too competitive, and the institutions don't collaborate. 10. Getting building permits in New York can be a hassle. THE ANSWERS 1. New York City is too expensive a place to live. FALSE. It's true that the cost of living in the borough of Manhattan is the country's highest, at 2.15 times the national average, according to community research nonprofit ACCRA. However, the city has four other boroughs, where most of its residents live. The cost of living in Queens, for example, is about 1.39 times the national average, better than San Francisco (1.81) and only slightly higher than Boston (1.37). 2. There aren't enough life scientists in New York. FALSE. The New York City region would seem to be lagging: its some 60 life science companies, with approximately 2,500 employees, compares with 820 companies employing more than 85,000 in the San Francisco Bay Area and 280 companies with 30,000 employees in the Boston area. But the New York City region – which includes Long Island and northern New Jersey – has more life sciences-related researchers (25,740), according to 2001 Bureau of Labor Statistics findings, than the Boston-Lawrence-Salem (9,830) and San Francisco-Oakland regions (10,240) combined. 3. There's not enough commercial lab space. TRUE. There is presently 112,000 square feet of commercial lab space in the city. Maria Gotsch of the New York City Investment Fund, says 1 million square feet – her goal for the next five years – would be the "critical mass" needed to elevate the city into a major biotech cluster. In comparison, real estate firm BT Commercial reports nearly 3 million square feet of R&D space is available in San Mateo County, which includes South San Francisco. Boston and Cambridge have over 1.5 million square feet available, according to real estate firm Spaulding & Slye Colliers. 4. Any available lab space is too expensive. FALSE. New York is expensive, but not necessarily as expensive as other areas. A key consideration in real estate is whether prices are triple net, which do not include operating expenses, taxes and electricity, or gross, which do. At the SUNY Downstate incubator, space costs $25 a square foot per year, triple net. At Columbia University's Audubon center, costs range from $17 to $41 triple net. That compares to an average rate for R&D space in the Bay Area of $11.40 triple net, although San Mateo County is pricier at $19.32. In Boston and Cambridge, that number is $40 to $50 triple net. 5. There's too much crime. FALSE. According to the latest FBI statistics, New York City is the safest large city in the United States in terms of total crime at less than 3,000 crimes per 100,000 people. In terms of violent crime, the city ranks at 16th safest in the nation at 750 such crimes per 100,000 people, compared to San Francisco at 15th (746 per 100,000) and Boston at 31st (1,224 per 100,000). 6. New Yorkers are rude. TRUE, But ... There may be a good reason: they're busy. "People can be extremely demanding and quite inconsiderate," says Alison North, Rockefeller University's Bio-Imaging Resource Center head. "On the positive side, I've never worked with such incredibly motivated people in my life. They're very enthusiastic, and it makes it much more exciting to work with them." 7. It's challenging starting a biotech company in the city. FALSE. Roughly 30 bioscience companies start up each year in New York, Gotsch says, about the same as in the San Francisco Bay area. The trick is keeping them in the city once they outgrow their lab space, many say. 8. New York's schools make it a bad place to raise a family. FALSE. While the state's school system definitely has challenges, including one-third of schools needing serious repairs or replacement, New York is still best in the nation in the proportion of high school seniors taking either the advanced placement science or calculus exams and is one of the top 8 states in the percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolling in college. 9. New York is too competitive, and the institutions don't collaborate. TRUE, But ... Academic institutions do have a track record of being very competitive (see p. 9). But the Academic Medicine Development Co. (AMDeC), a nonprofit consortium of 39 major New York universities and research centers, was formed to change that, says AMDeC director of science and technology Eelco Slagter. A recent example: a number of New York consortia were trying for the same National Institutes of Health grant for biodefense, "and they realized they'd knock each other out of the race if they competed, since NIH wanted one center per region. So in the end, the consortia pooled together and we got the center," says Slagter. 10. Getting building permits in New York can be a hassle. TRUE. The process of getting building permits in the city often draws complaints for being extraordinarily long and complicated, says New York Building Congress president Richard Anderson: "We're just going through a minor office expansion ourselves, a simple permit, just a renovation of 1,100 square feet. And it's taken months."

True or False?

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