Florida’s Loss Is CT’s Gain
by Christine Stuart | Sep 30, 2011 1:00pm
(9) Comments | Commenting has expired
Posted to: Business, Health Care, State Capitol
When Connecticut officials learned in June that Jackson Laboratories of Maine withdrew its request for state funding in Florida, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and his administration began talking about how to get them to expand in Connecticut.
Shortly after that, Malloy sent a group of state and University of Connecticut officials to Jackson Laboratories in Bar Harbor, Maine.
Jackson Laboratories Chief Financial Officer Charles Hewett said that since withdrawing from Florida they were approached by at least 10 different entities, mostly states.
“When the governor and his team came to us with Bioscience Connecticut already in place, with Yale and the University of Connecticut both on board, supportive, it was an opportunity we had to act on now,“ Hewett said Friday at a Capitol press conference.
The Bioscience Connecticut initiative, launched earlier this year, helps link the state’s bioscience and research facilities at UConn’s main campus on Storrs, it’s Health Center in Farmington, and similar work being done at Yale.
Jackson Laboratories President and CEO Edison Liu said that as a nonprofit laboratory specializing in personalized genomic medicine, they were attracted to Connecticut because of the research facilities and ability to test their developments in genetic technologies in a clinical setting.
The legislature will still need to approve spending $291 in state funds, $192 million in a construction loan, and $99 million in a research partnership. Jackson Laboratories will invest about $809 million in the project.
If the legislature gives its approval during the Oct. 26 special session, a deal between the state and Jackson is expected to be inked before the end of the year and construction of the 175,000 square-foot building will break ground sometime in 2014.
The legislature’s Republican minority, many of whom did not support the expansion of the Uconn Health Center and John Dempsey Hospital earlier this year, seemed optimistic this was an investment they could support if they had more information.
House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk, said a lot of the concerns his caucus had over the expansion of the medical center was the process and how it was suddenly before them without so much as a public hearing.
The legislature approved a plan earlier this year that adds about $254 million in bonding to the $362 million already approved by the legislature and former Gov. M. Jodi Rell for expansion of John Dempsey Hospital on the University of Connecticut Health Center‘s Farmington campus. The remaining $203 million will be raised from private donations.
Sen. Minority Leader John McKinney said he was never opposed to increasing the research space at UConn, he was opposed to spending more money on a hospital that continues to run deficits.
Jackson Laboratories will speak with the Republican caucuses on Oct. 12.
In the meantime, Liu said he will be sending researchers down to start their collaboration before the building at UConn’s Farmington Health Center campus exists.
“Research is not predictable, so I can’t tell you that in one year or two years, there will be something breathtaking that will come out of it,” Liu said. “Certainly our hope is to get started right away.”
Jackson Labs has 1,400 employees in total and much of what they do is support the research in mammalian genetics throughout the United States. In Bar Harbor, Liu said they don’t have a medical school.
“The distance between genomic discovery and application is pretty remarkable and so to have expertise in the medical context here in such depth will allow us to transfer much of the information and generate new systems much faster,” Liu said. “Once we do that then we can quite frankly tailor therapies for you that are more efficacious.”
According to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report personalized medicine, which Jackson Laboratories specializes in, is a $284 billion per year industry, which is growing 11 percent annually.
The state says the project will generate more than 800 construction jobs, and 300 high-paying research jobs in the first 10 years. The research jobs are expected to increase to more than 600 over 20 years and economic modeling shows that spin-off jobs and indirect jobs created by the investment will create about 6,200 jobs.
Tags: uconn, medical, Farmington, lab, Florida, Jackson, bioscience
(9) Comments
posted by: NOW What? | September 30, 2011 5:02pm
Hard to believe but true - Florida and its elected officials are *still* too dumb for their own good. Way to go, Connecticut!
posted by: Upset.Citizen | September 30, 2011 7:06pm
Build it and they will come…
Hey, how’s that football stadium in East Hartford working out?
I sure hope this is not a repeat of that!
BTW: If it does happen I hope the escaped experiments do not make Lyme disease look like a joke!
posted by: gutbomb86 | September 30, 2011 8:10pm
The football stadium is fantastic. You should check it out before you blab.
posted by: Upset.Citizen | September 30, 2011 8:57pm
@GUTBOMB86 - I have checked out the stadium so I can “blab”! The State spent 100s of millions of dollars of tax payer’s money building it for the Patriots and they use it all the time since they moved here, as was the deal at that time!
Oh wait, that’s not right, they didn’t move here after all!
The stadium is mostly unused except to the occasional high level open bar meeting in the ‘box’ by upper, upper managers who work for the state and politicians! (It’s a private tax payer funded club house!) The schedule of events for the stadium can be found here http://www.rentschlerfield.com/events.cfm… It’s sooooooo busy!!! 7 events for all of October and November! WOW! I can’t wait to go to the S.W. vs Simsbury HIGH SCHOOL football game on 10/6 or the S.W. vs. E.H. HIGH SCHOOL football game on 10/21!!!
That’s not the full story! Do an FOI request and you will see for yourself how often it is used and for what! (BTW: My boss’, boss’, boss’, boss’, boss attended a retirement dinner/drink party there a couple of months ago for a commissioner… you must have attended that as well! He said it was fantastic too!)
P.S. Don’t get me started on the Science Center that goes unused which cost twice as much as the football stadium due to the required move of CNG or the Convention Center next door! We can all see how those major expenditures of taxpayer money stimulated the economy reaching far into the future!
posted by: mollyanme | October 2, 2011 8:04pm
Excuse me, I may be wrong, but I was under the impression from news reports, that Florida wised up and “they” backed out because Jackson labs was not exactly what they preported themselves to be.
posted by: Disgruntled | October 3, 2011 10:35am
Mollyanne,please cite some facts re:Florida backing out.
You mean that Jackson Labs is not producing Nobel prize winning rats?!!
posted by: Disgruntled | October 3, 2011 10:45am
Hewett says the project will be financed by $809 million provided by the lab through federal grants, philanthropy and service income. The state’s share would be $291 million to assist with construction and research.
“The state is really putting up the money to build the facility, to equip it, to maintain it during the first 10 years and to subsidize what we project as the operating shortfall,” Hewett says.
Maybe Florida was wise not to get involved,with their lack of funds.Ct. is sooo flush with cash! The company could be playing one state against another and seems to have told Maine that they will benefit from this deal.
Could people/corporations be playing DAN for a fool with access to state funds and a spineless spendthrift legislature?
posted by: NOW What? | October 3, 2011 5:49pm
“mollyanme” - You said “I may be wrong, but I was under the impression from news reports, that Florida wised up and “they” backed out because Jackson labs was not exactly what they preported themselves to be.” - INCORRECT, and you’re excused 
Jackson Lab IS everything they’re said and “cracked up” to be. The problem in Florida was three-fold: a) the government-provided money/financing was to be SPLIT between the State of Florida and whichever county Jackson would’ve wound up in (they looked at Sarasota, Hillsborough, Lee and Collier Counties); b) Sarasota County already had some significant bio-tech firms and investments, so Jackson focused primarily on the other three; c) the populace and elected officials of those other three counties aren’t very knowledge about such things; d) those other three counties truly didn’t have any money in their budgets for such a project; and d) for a couple of reasons, Florida Gov. Rick Scott doesn’t want to use any State funds to entice companies or organizations to move to or grow in Florida, so he said no even though Sarasota County practically BEGGED him to re-consider (and Sarasota County’s the ONE county out of the four that actually is very knowledgeable about such projects). In fact, Rick Scott never even bothered to meet with Jackson Lab’s officials! The guy’s a crooked loser who SHOULD HAVE gone to jail over the HCA Medicaid fraud case (he was HCA’s CEO during that whole scam), but he got off by claiming he didn’t know anything about what his underling execs and managers were doing… yeah, right…
At any rate, check out Jackson Laboratory all you want, they come up honest, clean, and EXTREMELY well-respected throughout the world-wide bio-tech, bioscience and pharmaceutical R & D industries. Just ONE of their mice - used in R & D testing - goes for THOUSANDS of dollars. Connecticut did the right thing by going for this deal. Florida still has far too many ignorant and self-centered folks running their political shows (their most recent GOP primary date stunt is just one SMALL example).