By John Ephland
Late in 2008, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm came to Western Michigan University’s Business
Technology and Research Park (BTR). The occasion was to celebrate the opening of a new corporate headquarters for Kalexsyn, one of the startups that had outgrown the incubator and was now opening its own 20,000-square-foot facility.
Granholm held up this development as a prime example of what can happen when skilled entrepreneurs and key resources come together even in trying economic times. “This is an example of how Michigan can rise from extremely challenging economic circumstances,” Granholm said, adding, “It is time for this state to get to drink a bit of the Kalamazoo water.”
Among the partners that were crucial to this success story was WMU’s Biosciences Research and Commercialization Center, which provided funding and equipment funneled through the University. As a result, in four short years, the firm had gone from a startup run by two former Pfizer scientists to a company with 24 employees and annual sales of nearly $3 million.
“Kalexsyn – a medicinal chemistry research firm – has built their own facility and they are paying for it,” says Bob Miller, associate vice president for Community Outreach and WMU’s point person on the development of the BTR Park. “They’ve been on site a year and a half already. Kalexsyn is an example of the kind of growth being fostered at the BTR Park through Southwest Michigan First and its Innovation Center and the Biosciences Research and Commercialization Center.
“The categories of the companies we’ve attracted fall into the three legs of the economic stool,” Miller notes. “We recruit companies, retain companies and create companies. Our first company in the Park was Thermo Fisher Scientific, formerly Richard Allen Scientific. A world leader in the field of anatomical pathology, the company started out with a little over 100 employees but now has over 200. They are a great example of a company located in Kalamazoo that made the decision to stay, an example of a retention success story.” Pointing to a recruiting success story, Miller adds, “Emilien, a developer of oncology therapeutics recruited from California, is now located in the Southwest Michigan Innovation Center in the BTR Park.”
According to Cheryl Rowland, executive director of University Relations at WMU, “The BTR’s ‘SmartZone’ is recognized as the state’s most successful because of its ability to retain and redirect Kalamazoo’s significant population of life sciences commercialization specialists in a public research university atmosphere.” Asked to elaborate on this point, Miller explains, “The SmartZone initiative launched was able to grow much faster any other SmartZone in the state. SmartZone is a initiative of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, developed within a municipality with a university to retain and recruit technology companies, featuring legislated tax policies that benefit the SmartZone with a percentage of those taxes used for marketing, roads, infrastructure and paid for by BTR. A more accurate depiction – a great illustration of company creation – would be that we were successful with our Stick Around Campaign, an initiative launched by Southwest Michigan First with support from WMU that targeted people who were transitioning out of Pfizer. Kalexsyn, for example. Essentially what we said was, if you want to start a business we have resources that can help you, with access to capital, expertise and facilities.”
Speaking of capital, President and CEO Steward Sandstrom of the Kalamazoo Regional Chamber of Commerce, notes, “We are working with WMU to see if there are research dollars in the current Federal stimulus package that can be used in partnership with professionals at the Park.” As part of their mission to provide a hospitable climate for businesses, Sandstrom says, “Last year we helped pass a piece of legislation that caused energy prices to go down for commercial entities, including businesses in the BTR Park. This year a top priority will be to address the MBT surcharge. If successful, businesses will see a 22 percent reduction in their taxes.” Ongoing initiatives include retention and recruitment programs, including relocation packages.
In all, this success story is about economic development and job creation in the BTR Park: direct creation of more than 645 jobs with $25 million in annual payrolls, indirect creation of 682 jobs with $23 million in indirect salary creation, for a total of more than 1,300 jobs, with annual revenue coming to $182 million for BTR businesses.
Governor Granholm is on to something when she talks about that “Kalamazoo water.”
