Cleveland Health-Tech Corridor could solve space problem

MedcityNews.com

Laboratory and office space for up-and-coming biomedical companies has been tight in the University Circle area of Cleveland for several years.

Not a bad problem to have, until you start turning away promising young tenants for lack of space. And consider this: Northeast Ohio, which had about 250 biomedical companies in 2003, now has more than 600. So the space problem is probably getting worse.

In the mid-2000s, Case Western Reserve University and real estate developer Forest City Enterprises Inc. tried to strike a contract for West Quad — a proposed $125 million biotechnology campus to be built on a 14-acre site near the university that once was home to Mt. Sinai Medical Center.

Cleveland, Ohio-based Forest City built University Park in Cambridge, Massachusetts — the 2.3 million-square-foot science and technology campus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology – in 1999. But budget problems and new leadership at Case Western Reserve stalled the Cleveland plan.

Now, several organizations — from biomedical company developer BioEnterprise to real estate developer MidTown Cleveland Inc. to University Hospitals to governments Cleveland and Cuyahoga County — have feasibility studies in-hand and are beginning to put their resources together to create the Health-Tech Corridor in Cleveland.