Visions of drug plants, wet labs and incubator space once danced in the heads of Palm Beach County’s commercial real estate brokers and developers. But a decade after former Gov. Jeb Bush recruited the Scripps Research Institute to Florida, those dreams remain just a dream.
Perhaps patience is wearing thin among the commercial real estate types who once embraced the fantasy of a thriving biotech sector. Consider this exchange during Thursday night’s NAIOP South Florida event in West Palm Beach.
“I don’t even really know what to ask,” said Todd Everett, a broker at Marcus & Millichap and moderator of a panel discussion. “Is this our legacy, or is this a flop?”
“It’s slow in maturing,” said Jonathan Satter, a broker at Avison Young. “There’s a long way to go.”
Despite Florida’s $1.5 billion bet on biotech, private-sector spin-offs are nearly non-existent.
Bush, who worked in commercial real estate for a time before he was elected governor, insisted that northern Palm Beach County would need 8 million square feet of space for biotech companies. But Scripps spinoffs take little more than a few thousand square feet of space in Jupiter.
Source: Palm Beach Post
