By Martin Van Der Werf

The Missouri Research Park has helped kick-start the high technology corridor along Highway 40 (Interstate 64) in St. Charles County. The business Park, criss-crossed with walking trails, includes such firms as Zoltek Cos., a maker of carbon fibers; Nike IHM, where all prototypes for the athletic shoe company are produced; and Novus International, which tests and manufactures animal feed supplements. Rick Finholt has been the park’s director since its opening in 1989. A cerebral man, Finholt has seen a number of companies come in and fail. But he has patiently waited as the park has nearly filled to capacity. Novus and Westar Corp., which makes flat panel display test systems, are in the midst of expansions. We spoke in his office at the park.

Q. You were formerly a professor of American literature. Did you find that you had an aptitude for real estate development?

A. In my college English department they would probably suggest that I missed my calling.

I was always a marketing-oriented type person. I was one of the first people to teach science fiction as a general education requirement. We found out that this was a way of pulling the science students into the English department.

Q. Were you on the tenure track at Ohio State?

A. Yes, I was. I was voted tenure by the department in September of '81. (The dean's) committee rejected the department's recommendation. I was looking at having to go back and fight that. That's when (his former dean) said, "Why don't you come and work for me?" (at the Ohio State Research Park).

I never really looked back; I never really regretted it.

Q. Do you still engage in scholarly pursuits?

A. My field was literary theory. The most serious work I did was on a critic named Northrop Frye. I wrote a book that was never published on film theory. I got grants for it and everything else. I finished it, but I never polished it. It's still sitting in my drawer. That I might work on someday.

Q. Was this park established to commercialize inventions from the University of Missouri?

A. They had no real idea what they wanted to do. When you get into technology development, then you're brought face to face with the problem of technology management.

That's the real issue. It's not incubation, it's technology management. Research parks, where they really fit in, is for this middle tier of companies, these guys like Zsolt (Rumy, the founder of Zoltek Cos.). They are actually driving the market. Then, as they do that, they realize the need for tapping back into the university as a resource.

Q. Do you find that there is a lot of interaction between the university and these companies?

A. Everything in the world, from consulting to testing. For example, Novus International, they do all their live animal testing at the University of Missouri facilities in Columbia. They used to have their own live animal testing facility down here at WingHaven. That's why it is called WingHaven because it was owned by Novus, and the wings stand for chickens.

Q. Are there any requirements that a company here must provide a minimum number of

internships, or have certain interactions with the university?

A. That was a lesson I learned very early in the business. You don't enforce quotas, it's just not a good idea. When a company comes into the park, we ask them to enter into a good faith letter of understanding that they will, to the greatest extent possible, work with us. That works out really well. At any given time in this park, maybe half the companies are working with the university. But things happen. Management changes at the company. The faculty member they were working with leaves to another university.

There is a natural rhythm to these technologies. There are technologies that exist today that won't be here tomorrow. Who would have guessed that fax machines would be part of the business economy for no more than two decades? Now, ours sits silent all day. We still have one, but it's a relic. That's the nature of the technology. The higher the technology, the shorter the product life cycle.

And that means that there is always a churning. You have to get used to that in this business.

Q. Is this a money maker for the university?

A. What we've done is taken ground that was worth maybe 50 cents a square foot when we got here, and it is now worth $7 a square foot. The net revenues from this park flow back to the research enterprise at the University of Missouri.

Q. How much is that?

A. There have been $24 million in gross revenues over the history of the park. Net revenues to date are in the neighborhood of $8 million.

Q. Why do you think that this park has made it when so many other university-sponsored research parks and incubators have not done so well?

A. What we try to do here is to create an amenity-rich environment that would be a magnet to companies. What we know for sure is once you have created this cluster of high-technology companies, it tends to grow. The intellectual property of the company is contained within the minds of the people who work (there). The more content those people are, the more productive they are going to be.

Q. You also opened a small research park at Fort Leonard Wood in 2002. How is it going?

A. Great. We are 130 percent full.

Q. How is that possible?

A. I rented out my training rooms. My manager no longer has an office. I took my administration space and rented it out.

Q. Will you build another building there?

A. I'd love to, but right now the university feels that we need to do the same thing we did here. We established the model. Now it is time for the private sector (to add new buildings).

It has been a little slow because the private sector is nervous about working in a military reservation. It is sealed up pretty tight. Originally, a lot of people thought that's a real negative: It's easier to be outside the gate. Now they see it as the exact opposite: It's a positive because the Army keeps ratcheting up the security parameters depending on classification.

Rick Finholt, Executive director, Missouri Research Park

Age: 61

Education: Bachelor's degree in English literature, University of Illinois; Ph.D. in American literature, Northern Illinois University

Personal: Lives in Wildwood with wife, Mary Kay. Two grown sons.

Career: Before going to graduate school, worked as a social worker, a bond underwriter and in sales for Union Carbide Corp. After receiving his doctorate, he taught writing and literature at Northern Illinois, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Ohio State University. 1982-1987, assistant director, then director of the Ohio State University Research Park. 1987-1989, director of research park development at the University of Florida. August 1989, started current job.