UMSL Facility Helps IT Hopefuls

July 6, 2007

By Rachel Melcer
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Information technology entrepreneurs and researchers who are long on ideas but short on space will soon have a place to call home.

The University of Missouri-St. Louis paid $2.7 million for a building in north St. Louis County that it will transform into a supercomputing center and technology business incubator, which it calls IT Enterprises. It should be ready to accept tenants this fall, said Nasser Arshadi, vice provost for research.

UMSL said a year ago it would spend $5 million to establish the center, which will provide affordable office space, shared administrative services and equipment, plus on-site research consulting to up to a dozen startup firms. The supercomputer - which can solve problems involving huge amounts of data - also will serve UMSL faculty and graduate students, and may be hired out to local businesses and tenants of the university's budding business park.

UMSL had considered new construction on campus, but found a "beautiful building" at 4633 World Parkway Circle in Berkeley that meets its needs, Arshadi said.

The structure, with 42,200 square feet of usable space, had housed a science-based business with small labs that will be retrofitted as office suites. It also has a large, centrally located computer room that will feature lots of windows and house the supercomputer.

The building has been vacant for a few years, so UMSL got "a terrific price," said George Convey of CB Richard Ellis Inc., who brokered the deal on behalf of the seller.

The university has had inquiries from prospective tenants, Arshadi said. They are attracted by the center's low rent and available computing power, as well as its affiliation with UMSL's math and computer science department.

"I am confident we'll have a number of really vibrant companies coming in. All kinds of macroeconomic data suggests there's a significant demand … from the academic and business sides," he said.

IT Enterprises will have a scientific director who will manage computing projects and assign graduate students to help complete them. UMSL's students will benefit from hands-on, real-business-world problem-solving opportunities, while tenants gain from their insight.

"We are in the business of training students, and they're always on the top of our agenda," Arshadi said.

At the same time, the available supercomputing power should help to attract "hotshot" computer science professors with ideas for grant-funded research.

Missouri has a growing high-tech industry, according to a recent study by the nonprofit technology trade group AeA. It tallied 88,300 workers at 5,500 IT firms in 2005, the most recent year for which data was available. The state gained 1,800 IT jobs over the prior year, AeA said.

UMSL has pulled together a board for IT Enterprises composed of leaders from local businesses, research institutes and universities. They include Monsanto Co., Boeing Co., Washington University, St. Louis University and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.

"We look at them as our natural partners," Arshadi said. "We always wanted to be part and parcel of IT efforts in the St. Louis region. Even though we're initiating this project, we never claimed whole ownership."