Giving substance to dreams: Edmonton Research Park looks to the future

November 22, 2009

By Jesse Leaf
Senior Editor
Troy Media

EDMONTON, AB, Nov. 22, 2009/ Troy Media/ — When you think about the great technology centers of the world, Edmonton, Alberta, probably doesn’t spring to mind. Yet, a small cadre of dedicated and talented people are determined to put that city on the scientific map by building an advanced business incubator for biotechnology, energy, medical, and transportation research, development, and manufacturing.

Edmonton Research Park (ERP) is 88 acres of brainpower: A division of Edmonton Economic Development Corporation, it sits on a spacious and beautifully designed campus in South Edmonton. More than 1,500 people from some 55 companies work there.

The park is giving substance to dreams, recognizing that for an enterprise to succeed it must go through various stages of development and be provided with both a physical location and networking opportunities.

Stage one: incubation

The first thing you see when you drive into the research park is the award-winning Advanced Technology Center, a striking building that looks like a futuristic bunker set in a hillside. The ATC houses more than 30 startup companies in the first stage of their development. It is designed to ease the difficult early days of commercialization by offering flexible lease arrangements, common meeting rooms and administration facilities, as well as support from government agencies. Many of the companies which started out here now successfully operate both locally and around Canada. The modern, state-of-the-art offices are designed to house no more than nine people.

Stage two: Research Centre One – a business accelerator

For companies ready to move to the next level, the Research Centre One building provides a more flexible working environment, including space for wet labs, pilot manufacturing, and office space for 10 to 30 people. The 41,000 square-foot building also allows the construction of controlled environments.

A relatively recent addition to the stage-two stable of incubators is the Biotech Business Development Center. This multi-tenant wet-lab facility focuses on the hot field of biotechnology, currently a priority of the ERP. It accommodates companies — typically 30 to 50 employees — capable of generating income.

Stage three: independent sites

The park also has lots for lease or purchase for mature firms seeking to independently develop their own sites. The sites offer the advantage of working in a community of resident technology entrepreneurs, research organizations, and educational institutions. Resident companies include Schlumberger, Micralyne, Syncrude, C-FER, and Affexa.

Candace Brinsmead

The Edmonton Research Park has become so successful that it is bursting at the seams. According to Candace Brinsmead, vice-president of technology advancement, EEDC, “We only have four lots available, and there are negotiations going on for three of them. We’ll need to expand fairly soon. And we will be looking to the Southlands (85 acres of provincially-controlled land immediately south of the Research Park) to do that.”

“Because we see a boom coming in the technology sector, it will be a much more dense area than the Research Park is now,” Brinsmead predicts. “Right now, we have a zoning limit of two floors. We see that we’re probably going to have to go up to eight floors and have fairly dense office and lab space.”

And that’s only the beginning. ERP’s plan is to reach outside the Park by building networks throughout the innovation community within Edmonton, across the province, the country, maybe even the world.

Regional alliance formed

“It’s a big vision, but it’s totally doable,” says Brinsmead. One of the immediate projects she is involved in is a new regional alliance between ERP; TEC Edmonton, a business accelerator; the National Institute for Nanotechnology; novaNAIT, a research and development arm of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology; and the Northern Alberta Business Incubators.

To explain the alliance, Brinsmead says that, “Primarily we create space. Actually, we horse trade so we can work together — the five of us — to do what’s best for the tenant,” which is broken down into three parts:

At first, the tenant’s needs may be office space, lab space, or services like mentorship or help with commercialization. The regional alliance becomes one point of entry for the tenant or inventor who’s trying to move a new concept along the innovation chain.

“The second layer,” says Brinsmead, “is involvement with the product developers, the people who can help scale up. And, at some point, the third level will be the people who can fund some of these ideas.”

Brinsmead is confident that Edmonton has the wherewithal to become one of the top 10 research parks in North America, given its people, facilities and support — both public and private.

“If you look at the major research parks around the world, there are none, save Finland, that have the technology or the government support that we have,” she explains. “Instead of asking us to be profitable as soon as possible, the city wants us to create value. Build the technologies that will create the successful businesses that will contribute to Edmonton. And create the technologies that will save lives and protect our environment.”