Charles Dilks, 72, thoroughly
enjoyed the party at the Hotel Monaco, where he and 400 others toasted the
University City Science Center on its 50th anniversary.
"We had a great
time," he said.
That was Thursday.
In the mid-1960s, when Dilks
was the second employee hired at the science center, it was an entirely
different story.
"We were at the very
edge of bankruptcy," said Dilks, who went from being an all-everything
administrator to head of operations as the complex grew in stature and
physically expanded. "I had many sleepless nights."
Lauded as the nation's first
urban research park, the University City Science Center is one of the region's
prime incubators of technical businesses, generating $9.4 billion in regional
economic activity, according to one report.
Its QED program provides a
way for professors to test their ideas for commercial viability. Its Quorum
serves as a gathering place for entrepreneurs, investors, and advisers.
The center grew from one
building to 15, with one underway and another on the drawing board, on an
eight-acre campus that lines Market Street from 34th Street to just west of
38th.
Started with $500,000
contributed by a handful of area universities, it now has 31 partners and
annual revenue of $22 million, mostly from rents paid by 100 health, science,
and biotech companies.
The rents fund the center's
core mission, housed in about 50,000 square feet: the incubation and development
of job-generating companies, explained Stephen Tang, the center's chief
executive.
"It was a deteriorating
area . . . with a variety of low-rise buildings, mostly bars," said Dilks,
recalling 1963.
The presidents of Temple,
Drexel, and Penn decided Philadelphia needed something like the North Carolina
Research Triangle Park, particularly since the city's manufacturing base was
eroding. Local science companies said they would be tenants.
By the time the center
opened, "all the [prospective tenants] had moved out of the city,"
Dilks said.
Besides that, neighbors were
convinced, Dilks said, that this would be urban renewal, and they were going to
be booted from their homes. Vietnam-era peace activists protested, worried that
the center would focus on war-related research.
Eventually the center landed
one tenant for 90 percent of 3401 Market St. Then the tenant left. "We
were in a situation where we had negative-cash-flow problems," Dilks
recalled.
But that crisis gave rise to
the science center's current philosophy.
"We had to grow our own
companies," Dilks said.
Invisible Sentinel Inc. is
one of those companies.
"There's no other place
like this around," said Benjamin Pascal on Thursday, hours before the
celebration.
He and his partner, Nicholas
Siciliano, had just hosted potential investors in a conference room available
to Invisible Sentinel and the 30 other "port" or incubator companies
housed on campus. Their guests were greeted by the shared receptionist.
In 2006, the partners
developed a quick and cheap way to test foods for E. coli and other
bacteria. In 2007, they moved into the center and are now about to graduate
from their incubator-priced lab space to commercial quarters within the
complex, tripling their square footage to 7,500 and doubling their current
18-employee staff.
In 2014, Pascal said,
revenue, now "several hundred thousand," will top $2 million.
The center places a high
premium on coincidental connections, and those served Pascal and Siciliano.
They met two investors at a networking event hosted at the center.
Pascal said Invisible
Sentinel was committed to Philadelphia. "I bought a home in Philly, and
I'm here to stay," he said.
One of the University City
Science Center's most famous graduates is Centacor Ortho Biotech Inc. Started
in the center in 1979, it is now a major regional employer and maker of the
much-prescribed drug Remicade, among others.
Michael Patterson hopes his
company, Graphene Frontiers, gets to that point. His nanotech company has
developed a way to mass-produce sheets of graphene, a strong, supple material
that is just one atom thick, and with a multitude of potential uses.
Because the science center
wrote a letter of support saying that Graphene had turnkey lab space in its
facility, Graphene was able to get a key government grant.
"I believe that
Philadelphia is the best place in the world to start a nanotechnology
company," Patterson said.
Source: Philly.com
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