Twenty years ago the site of the Missouri Research Park in St. Charles County, surrounded by undeveloped land and pastures, was being considered for active incorporation into the University of Missouri’s agriculture experiment station, with cattle, natural resource and forest management studies. Today, with MRP leading the way, the area has developed into a high-tech corridor.
The MRP serves as the gateway to a corridor that now boasts an annual payroll of $1 billion and has attracted a cluster of companies from MasterCard International to Verizon and Citibank. The 700-acre MRP itself includes 15 companies and two federal agencies occupying 1.5 million square feet and employing more than 2,000 people. While technology is clearly the dominant focus, the park’s amenities also include an award-winning golf course, trails and lakes.
The University of Missouri owns and operates the MRP. It is extending a similar vision of transforming a field of dreams into a high-tech reality with its other research parks and incubators located throughout the state. In keeping with the University’s economic development mission, the parks are designed to encourage innovation and to move research from the laboratory to the marketplace.
The University’s network of parks and incubators continue to break boundaries. The University of Missouri Technology Park at Fort Leonard Wood is the first technology park in the nation on an active Army post. The 62-acre park was created by the University and the Missouri Department of Economic Development.
At the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Express Scripts, Inc., is nearing completion on its headquarters at the campus’ Business, Technology and Research Park (BTR). Express Scripts, the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits manager, will become the highest-ranking Fortune 500 company with corporate headquarters adjacent to a university campus. The company’s relocation to UMSL was a product of major collaboration involving the University, the state and the county. Development has begun at the new Discovery Ridge Research Park in Columbia.
In Columbia, the new Discovery Ridge Research Park shares its agricultural origins with the MRP. The park is being developed at the South Farm, a 1,452-acre University of Missouri-Columbia agriculture experiment station. The intent is to create an entrepreneurial village, with the two purposes reinforcing each other. South Farm will demonstrate the latest in agricultural stewardship while Discovery Ridge and its occupants will focus on providing a home for businesses in the life sciences. Analytical Bio-Chemistry Laboratories, Inc. will become the park’s first tenant when it relocates its corporate headquarters and pharmaceutical labs to Discovery Ridge. The company is coming home -- ABC Labs was founded in 1968 by MU biochemistry professor Dr. Charles Gehrke and two graduate students.
To help move research from the lab to the marketplace, the University of Missouri-Columbia also is developing a life science business incubator nearby its campus. It will join UMSL’s Center for Emerging Technologies, which has been named one of the top 10 incubators in the country. With both research parks and incubators in the Columbia and St. Louis communities, the University is well- positioned to nurture companies and encourage economic growth. Research shows that 84 percent of incubator graduate companies remain in the regions where they first began.
That’s good news for the University and for Missouri.
