LAB SPACE PLANNED FOR CHIP PLANT; BUYER OF FACILITY HOPES TO DRAW BIOSCIENCES FIRM

BYLINE: Ken Alltucker, The Arizona Republic

A Valley company has bought one of Motorola's first chip plants in Phoenix with the goal of providing space for another emerging industry: biosciences.

An affiliate of Value-Tek spent $5.8 million to acquire the 91,000-square-foot building from Motorola spinoff ON Semiconductor Corp.

Value-Tek CEO Greg Heiland said the office and warehouse were the birth of the Valley's semiconductor industry established by Motorola in 1956. The industry spawned tens of thousands of jobs at chip plants across the Valley.

Now, Heiland said the site could be used by bioscience or other research companies as a place to conduct experiments.

"We want to get the word out that this type of space is available," Heiland said. "We are looking for tenants who are interested in this type of space. It could be a biotech company."

For now, the warehouse and office will be occupied by tenants that will pay the bills.

Value-Tek, which provides clean-room equipment for life science and other tech firms, will take about one-third of the building.

Other smaller tenants will include Great American Merchandise Events, Cactus Flower and DHL, which will occupy a small office for its cargo-container logistics business.

Still available is a 15,000-square-foot space that Heiland said can easily be converted to a "wet-lab" space.

Economic development officials say there is a shortage of wet-lab space for small research companies, costing the Valley several startup companies that have bypassed the Valley and moved to other cities with available space.

There has been a building boom of mainly institutional wet-lab space such as Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute and the University of Arizona's Bio5, but private companies that want immediate move-in space are largely out of luck.

There is little privately owned space in the Valley for a small biotech company to immediately use.

Heiland said he will market the building's available space for biotech companies or possibly small chip operations.

The building includes many of the touches needed by a biotech company. Gas, water and sewer connections are located in the building and can be modified for modern research purposes, he said.

Heiland said he will donate a small space for Arizona State University researchers.

He bought the building with a loan through Phoenix's economic development department.

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Reach the reporter at ken.alltucker@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8285.