Today, the Governor announced that New York will invest $50 million in state of the art biomedical research equipment and facilities, and has secured an agreement from a private company, Albany Molecular Research Inc. (AMRI), to locate in Western New York at Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BMNC) a new drug discovery research and development center. This investment, $35 million of which will go towards new equipment and $15 million of which will go towards improving existing lab space, will leverage $200 million in private investments and create 250 jobs. At least initially, the facility is expected to be located in the Innovation Center on Ellicott Street.
Albany Molecular Research, Inc. is a global contract research and manufacturing organization offering customers fully integrated drug discovery, development, and manufacturing services.
The advanced manufacturing and health sciences approaches to job growth, two key tenets of Governor Cuomo's overall Buffalo Billion investment, will be based on recreating what nano-electronic research and development did for the Capital Region in Western New York, instead using nano-biomedical R&D. Rather than give money directly to private companies, the State, through SUNY, invested in core infrastructure and equipment and used that equipment as the incentive to attract companies to establish themselves in these new high-tech facilities located in the Capital Region. This provided a state owned foundation for private sector job growth. This approach made the Capital Region the international center for nanoscale research, and now commercial, development in the field of electronics.
The Governor, through his Buffalo Billion initiative and under the leadership of the Western New York Regional Economic Development Council, is making a down payment on replicating this approach in Western New York, however using a different field of research and development than what was used in the Capital Region. These strategic investments by the state, leveraged significantly with private investment, will build upon Western New York's leadership in life science research and increase the commercialization of innovations developing from that research as well as more advanced manufacturing jobs in the pharmaceutical industry.
AMRI Chairman, CEO & President Thomas E. D'Ambra, Ph.D. said, "Albany Molecular Research, Inc. is pleased to be working with the State of New York to locate a new state-of-the-art pharmaceutical research, development and testing operation in Buffalo. We salute Governor Andrew Cuomo's vision and leadership in building a new New York as a global hub for pioneering innovation and economic opportunity in the leading scientific fields of the 21st century. This new initiative with recognized institutions like the Jacobs Neurological Institute of the University at Buffalo and the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering is projected to generate over $250 million in investments and attract 250 high-paying positions to Buffalo."
"Since our founding in the Capital District in 1991, AMRI continues to be a long-time corporate citizen in Upstate New York. AMRI currently has nearly 700 employees in New York, with just under 1,300 employees companywide and has invested almost $200 million in the Albany and Syracuse regions over the years," said D'Ambra. "AMRI is excited to be working with the Governor and our other partners in making this vision a reality."
"Our signature initiatives build upon our council's 2011 five-year plan, 'A Strategy for Prosperity in Western New York,' by exploring the opportunity to leverage our region's key assets," said Howard A. Zemsky, Managing Partner at Larkin Development Group and Regional Council Co-chair. "I thank Governor Cuomo for giving our region this incredible opportunity to support the expansion of local companies, and to target and attract new businesses from across the country and around the globe."
In other Medical Campus news, The Jacobs Institute was awarded $4 million for the construction of a medical device prototyping and research facility. The project will result in the creation of 20 new jobs, and will help leverage an estimated $12 million in private sector investment. The construction of the Jacobs Institute facility is on schedule as the non-profit continues to build partners with businesses like Toshiba.
Great first step...250 new jobs....spin off, new building on the campus....From the sounds of it, the next 6 years at the BNMC will be extremely busy with 5 new builds at least....Construction jobs, restaurants feeding these people, new student population, 250 good paying jobs....
This is great news....
I think this is positive but I also heard the numbers on the company..I hope this is only a first step for Cuomo and his Billion fo buffalo campaign...Although this is good...AMRI is a 400 million dollar company with 40 million in net revenue...That is a nice size company ....But since Buffalo is a city without a Fortune 500 company calling it home or even a second home....This is the opportunity to steal someone like what Buffalo has been done to for years......Put together a package that is irrestible for a company to locate 2k plus jobs....I am only a person with an opinion and no real facts to base this off of....but it can be done...should be easy....
Here is what we go after.....Enough incentive can lure anyone.......
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-06/apple-to-invest-in-manufacturing-macs-in-u-s-ceo-cook-says.html?cmpid=msnmoney
A billion for Buffalo for this-
he rumor on Foxconn planning to open manufacturing plants in the U.S. is true. According to Bloomberg, Foxconn spokesman Louis Woo said, “We are looking at doing more manufacturing in the U.S. because, in general, customers want more to be done there.” Woo wouldn’t name clients, but in light of Tim Cook’s confirmation that Apple is investing over $100 million in manufacturing some Macs in the U.S. next year, it’s not difficult to deduce that the world’s most valuable company is a primary reason for Foxconn’s upcoming plans.
Woo also noted that ”Supply chain is one of the big challenges for U.S. expansion” and that “any manufacturing we take back to the U.S. needs to leverage high-value engineering talent there in comparison to the low-cost labor of China.”
In addition to creating thousands of new jobs, Foxconn’s expansion into the U.S. also has another benefit: reduced delivery times for new products. Whereas most iPhones and iPads are assembled in China, having plants on U.S. soil would allow quicker transport times. And for super-secretive companies like Apple, it could also mean fewer product leaks from the factory line.
elmdog, if it was as simple as you say and as good an idea as you say, don't you suppose they'd just go ahead and do it?
NYS just agreed to give $50M from taxpayers for what very possibly will end up being less than even the 250 jobs Cuomo is claiming (and most of the lapdog media is naively making sound like a sure thing, despite AMRI saying they'd hire only a small fraction of 250 jobs).
Where should the $ for all these "incentive" handouts that you're advocating come from?
How much public $ would you be willing to hand to a company like your suggestion of Foxconn in return for them creating say 2,000 jobs here?
What I've read says they're considering moving just one of the Mac lines back to the U.S.
In the U.S., we employ about 200,000 industrial engineers (total, all industries). In China, Apple (through other companies) employs 30,000 industrial engineers supporting 700,000 line workers.
In the Job's biography, he points out that there aren't enough engineers in the U.S. to cover what Apple would need.
It will be interesting to see what manufacturing vendors of Apple and other electronics firms end up doing in the U.S., and where, why, etc.
I wonder how many $ would given by NY state to any company per each job it created here making components for trendy products. It could be a very large amount in the recent trend of multimillion gifts for 17 new jobs at Rich's and for AMRI's "small fraction" of supposedly/eventually 250 jobs at BNMC.
Then again, if NYS subsidizes industrial engineers it could backfire in the impact on job count totals - since one of the purposes of an IE is to find ways of minimizing the total #'s of workers needed to manufacture things.
Maybe NYS would offer to subsidize only IE's who promise to not be very effective!