The result: Wake Forest Biotech Place, a $100 million, 242,000-square-foot research and innovation center featuring custom designed laboratory, office and mixed-use spaces with enough conserved historical features to meet State Historic Preservation Office and National Park Service criteria, as well as newly installed “green” attributes to earn LEED Gold certification.
Future Plans
Biotech Place is home to several Wake Forest Baptist research departments and Wake Forest Innovations, its commercialization arm, along with private scientific companies, a credit union branch and café. It also features a 4-story, 7,500-square-foot atrium that is used for tenant, institutional and community events.
At the building’s opening in February 2012, Dan Cramer, Wexford’s senior vice president for development, called Biotech Place “a powerful beginning to what we hope will be a transformation of this historical manufacturing district into a state-of-the-art, knowledge-based community.”
Wexford then put its hopes into action. In May 2013–shortly before Wexford merged with BioMed Realty Trust Inc., a San Diego-based entrepreneurial company focused on providing real estate to the life-science industry, and shortly after the research park had been renamed Wake Forest Innovation Quarter–Wexford announced it had purchased two more Reynolds structures from Wake Forest Baptist and that it would invest approximately $150 million in their renovation, again using federal and state tax credits.
“We could have built new buildings,” Cramer told the Wall Street Journal in April. “But the economic benefits to these tax credits are strong enough that you wouldn’t really choose to do new construction unless you had to.”
Both redeveloped facilities, located across the street from Biotech Place, had their official openings this spring. One is the 240,000-square-foot Team Support Center and headquarters of Inmar, an information-technology company that had its more than 900 employees scattered across multiple sites around Winston-Salem. The other, a 234,000-square-feet building called 525@ Vine, houses two Wake Forest Baptist departments, a membership co-working space and a YMCA branch. By the end of the year, 525@Vine will add a medical technology company and community college technology education center.
“Biotech Place definitely provided a centerpiece for the district, but Inmar and 525@ Vine represent something of a tipping point,” says Eric Tomlinson, president of Wake Forest Innovation Quarter. “They’ve provided a critical mass of people and an excellent mix of academic and commercial interests that have already contributed to the evolution of the Innovation Quarter as a true hub of collaborative intellectual and economic activity.”
That evolution is by no means complete. Projects under way include construction of the North Carolina Center for Design Innovation on a 4-acre site at the southern end of the park near Winston-Salem State University, Salem College and the North
Carolina School of the Arts; conversion of RJR’s former Plant 64 into an apartment and retail complex that will boost the number of the residential units in and around the district to more than 2,200; construction of a 500-space parking deck, partially funded by the city and county, adjacent to the Inmar and 525@Vine buildings; and creation of a 1.6-acre park next to Biotech Place. There are two remaining former Reynolds facilities primed for rehabilitation: the 5-story, 330,000-square-foot “Building 60” and the multi-level Bailey Power Plant. Aside from them, the park’s future growth will entail new construction on undeveloped land to the south of the old tobacco factory district.
Economic conditions will surely play a major role in the Innovation Quarter’s future. The state tax-credit program that has been so instrumental in its development is due to expire at the end of this year. But the park has definitely made a positive mark: In affirming Forsyth County’s bond ratings in April, Fitch Ratings Inc. stated it was optimistic that Wake Forest Innovation Quarter’s “sound prospects will underscore long-term growth.”
“There’s still much to be done, but what has been accomplished here in a relatively short period of time to establish a knowledge-based economy and community is quite remarkable,” Tomlinson adds. “And what’s most remarkable is that it has involved so many different players from different spheres–Wake Forest Baptist, Wexford, R.J. Reynolds, the city, the county, the state, federal agencies, area businesses, local organizations, Wake Forest University, the other colleges and universities. “There is no doubt that the City of Arts & Innovation has begun a new chapter in its long tradition of being an exciting and innovative city.”