Promoting innovation; Zone in Berks and Lehigh gets state funds to foster collaboration
BYLINE: By Jeanne Bonner Of The Morning Call
A former AT&T research center in Breinigsville will be part of a state-sponsored innovation district that seeks to foster collaboration between universities, entrepreneurs and communities.
Tek Park is in one of five separate nodes in the Greater Reading Keystone Innovation Zone, the second such district in the state to include portions of the Lehigh Valley. The zone's sub-areas will be concentrated around five educational institutions, including Kutztown University and Albright College in Reading. The Lehigh Valley's first KIZ is in south Bethlehem and includes Lehigh University.
The Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce and Industry and other local groups applied for the state KIZ designation in part to increase regional partnerships. The district straddles Lehigh and Berks counties.
The Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce, which will manage the KIZ, will receive $235,000 in seed money. Most of the money will be used to pay a coordinator a salary and benefits.
The participating organizations, including the Berks Economic Partnership, will contribute a combined $235,000 in matching funds. Most of those funds will be in the form of services. The Chamber, for example, will provide clerical support, said President Ellen Horan. The KIZ will be eligible for three other rounds of funds from the state.
The KIZ in the Reading area will focus on several industries, including advanced materials and diversified manufacturing, and food processing. Horan of the Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce said the KIZ designation will be "an attraction tool in and of itself," for companies in those fields and others. Companies located the zones receive some tax benefits, and are encouraged to hire area students.
There are now more than 20 such zones in the state. State officials hope the zones, which were launched in 2004, will accelerate the commercialization of products and services that spring from research at the resident universities. The KIZs are aimed at creating "knowledge neighborhoods" to combat the "brain drain" in which graduates flee the state for better-paying jobs.
"We must take the steps necessary to ensure that intellectual capital found in these schools and the research taking place there benefit our economy," said Gov. Ed Rendell in a news release Tuesday. "By supporting these innovation zones, we're making an investment in our future -- helping to move this research from the lab to the marketplace."
Tek Park is already geared to create some of the dynamics the state wants to encourage. The facility, opened by AT&T as a Bell Labs research center in 1987 and now owned by a private investor, is home to several small tech companies. Kutztown University will open an Innovation Center there, and plans to hold some of its masters of business administration courses there. University officials foresee collaboration with tenant companies on applications for research grants. The companies share common space, and some work in similar industries.
The park is home to CyOptics, a manufacturer of lasers used in fiber-optic networks. The company moved to the facility to take advantage of the manufacturing facilities for indium phosphide chips, which are the foundation for the company's lasers.
Other companies at the park that might benefit from the KIZ include Mesh Semiconductor, which has developed a proprietary semiconductor chip technology.
Larry Stuardi, the president of MRA Group, which bought Tek Park last year, said the KIZ will be "the glue that puts it all together."
The KIZ is the first to include portions of Lehigh County. Don Cunningham, the Lehigh County executive, said in a letter of support for the application that Tek Park is "an impressive facility that can serve as the hub of a bi-county public-private partnership."
Cunningham said he supported the KIZ designation because he wants to increase collaboration between Lehigh and Berks Counties. He said regional efforts typically focus on Northampton County, but Lehigh and Berks Counties share a long border, and common interests. Tek Park, for example, is on Route 222 in Lehigh County, but is only about a mile east of the Berks County border.
The new bi-county KIZ differs somewhat from the one in south Bethlehem, which is more compact. The one announced Tuesday, by contrast, has five separate zones that stretch from Reading to Breinigsville.
The Bethlehem district was one of the first two announced in the state. It recently unveiled a wireless computer network that includes more than 50 signal access points scattered around the Third and Fourth street business district. The wireless computing system allows students, business owners and visitors to roam around south Bethlehem with laptop computers and handheld devices while maintaining a high-speed Internet connection.
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