Georgia Tech Eyes 60-acre Westside Innovation District (Atlanta: 2015, apartment)

[HH82]

Georgia Tech is looking to expand its Technology Enterprise Park campus off North Avenue near Northside in a major way. This article is behind a paywall though. No other ones I can find yet.

Georgia Tech eyes 60-acre Westside innovation district - Atlanta Business Chronicle

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

The development, which could initially encompass about 60 acres, would include a cluster of Georgia Tech research buildings on North Avenue and surrounding property owned by others, including the Atlanta Housing Authority, sources said. A more ambitious version sees the innovation district extending south beyond the Georgia World Congress Center and including the area immediately surrounding the new Atlanta Falcons stadium, a source said.

Georgia Tech was awarded a $460,707 federal grant to examine the feasibility of expanding Technology Enterprise Park, which provides 173,000 square feet of multi-tenant laboratory space in two buildings. The study will help determine, among other things, project costs, types of mixed-use activities and how the development might be integrated into the surrounding area. The University Financing Foundation (TUFF), Invest Atlanta, and the Atlanta Housing Authority served as partners to Georgia Tech in the grant proposal.

The project’s backers point to the success of Technology Square — an eight-block, mixed-used redevelopment on Fifth and Spring streets that transformed a seedy Midtown strip into a hive of tech incubators, innovation centers, startups and venture capital firms that is a national model for innovation district development. That commercial activity has set off a spurt of apartment and retail development in the area.

Kevin Byrne, president of TUFF, which owns one of the Technology Enterprise Park buildings, views the biosciences district as a live-work-play environment that would revitalize the Westside by luring investment and jobs from health services, life sciences, medical device and pharma companies.

The proposed health and biosciences innovation district would host university spinoffs from Emory University, Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, Clark Atlanta, and Morehouse School of Medicine, and provide land for Technology Enterprise Park tenants (CardioMems, Kemira, and CryoLife) to expand without leaving the area. The district would also attract research and innovation enterprises, such as the Global Center for Medical Innovation and the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

“We want to create an appropriate neighborhood for innovation and job-creation, long term,” said Chris Downing, associate vice president of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute. “If we create a mixed-use neighborhood in that area ... with opportunities for additional research, the corporate presence will be expanded.”

Metro Atlanta lacks a master-developed biosciences park it can pitch to companies seeking expansion or relocation sites, said Russell Allen, CEO of Georgia Bio, an industry trade association.

Here is the important bits

[HH82]

Thank you, GeorgiaPeanuts. This would definitely help fill the void left by the apparent collapse of the original Fort McPherson science and technology park plan.

[alco89]

Georgia Tech ain't messin' around.

[LovelySummer]

Great!