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Hudson's vision grows

Sunday, July 20, 2008 -By BRIAN LAWSON - Times Business Writer brian.lawson@htimes.com

 

Biotech companies expected to fill out mile-long campus

 

The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, which officially opened this spring, is already growing with construction of a conference center and plans for a "mile-long campus."

The campus on the drawing board would be filled by companies and educational institutions recruited to build on the HudsonAlpha site.

Today, the institute is housed in a 270,000-square-foot building in Cummings Research Park that provides space to 12 biotech companies and a nonprofit research center.

The building was designed to encourage informal collaboration between researchers who work there. Institute co-founder and President Jim Hudson believes that kind of atmosphere is critical to scientific discovery, with the chance encounter in the hall leading to a surprising breakthrough or connecting otherwise unrelated ideas.

His proposed campus would feature that same approach, but on a much larger scale.

"The concept is a mile-long campus, and the center of the campus is a grove of trees, and the grove is fairly narrow," Hudson said last week. "The purpose of the site plan is to figure out how to build on the campus the same sort of environment we have in the building."

The institute worked with Fuqua & Partners Architects in Huntsville, which collaborated with internationally renowned design firm Sasaki Associates on the site plan.

Tim Packard, a Fuqua partner, said the vision includes a center spine running north from the institute and modeled on great pedestrian spaces in Asia and other parts of the world.

Collaboration key

The grove design would allow buildings to be constructed along a pedestrian path, while parking would be set up to the east and west, away from the center.

"At points along the grove, there are some nodes, even some retail spaces and cafes, to help keep people on campus, so they will not have to leave to go to lunch or dinner," Packard said.

"The space will keep them on campus, so they can collaborate in a less formal setting."

The campus would stretch for nearly a mile, and Hudson hopes to see it filled within 15 years. The space would extend north to Explorer Boulevard, which the city plans to connect in the next year.

The Huntsville City Council recently agreed to swap 52 acres across Moquin Drive, which HudsonAlpha had an option to buy, in exchange for selling HudsonAlpha 83 acres north of the institute. HudsonAlpha now owns 148 acres.

The southern property has infrastructure in place, but the northern tract - priced at $2.9 million according to city records - lets HudsonAlpha maintain its campus in one continuous space.

HudsonAlpha's director, Dr. Rick Myers, has finished his work as head of Stanford's Genomics Lab and is now in Huntsville full-time. The institute has about 75 people working on the nonprofit research side, but Hudson expects that number to reach 100 by September.

'Warm Spring Harbor'

The $7 million conference center, set to open early next year, will primarily be a site for scientific conferences and meetings of about 200 or more. It's being built on institute property by Hudson's family.

"My dream for a long time - my daughter worked for me on this for a while, and my son is also a minor investor - was that we would build a facility similar to Cold Spring Harbor" off Long Island Sound east of New York City, Hudson said.

"I've nicknamed (our project) 'Warm Spring Harbor.' Cold Spring Harbor is really the center for genomic-type conferences in the U.S."

The problem, Hudson said, is that Cold Spring is booked year-round.

"Ultimately, this is an opportunity for a second center to concentrate strictly on genomics," he said. "We want to be that place where people come all over the world to attend important scientific meetings in the field of genomics.

"The next step (after the conference center) is to build an auditorium."

Hudson said the institute did not budget for such a facility but needs the conference space.

Family's role

The for-profit company financing the project, Jackson Conference Center LLC, is led by Hudson's daughter and son-in-law and is leasing the land from the institute. The lease agreement is expected to include language calling for the LLC to turn over the conference center to the institute when the lease ends in 15 to 20 years, Hudson said.

The space will also be available for outside use.

Hudson said market research suggests a need and interest for a center of that size with advanced video- and audio-conferencing capabilities.