Leaders call for developing biotech industry in RI. Here's what they propose

PROVIDENCE − Worcester can have baseball, but Rhode Island leaders want a piece of the Massachusetts city's biotech business.

"If Worcester, Massachusetts can create a bioscience hub, then why can't Providence, Rhode Island?" House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi asked a group of businesspeople at an event in support of establishing a state-backed life-science cluster similar to what exists in the Bay State.

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Worcester, which famously stole Rhode Island's minor-league baseball team a few years ago, gets "$1 billion in economic benefit and over 1,000 jobs" from life sciences," Shekarchi said. "We can recreate that in Rhode Island. We can exceed that. And it is not an either/or proposition. Worcester can thrive just like Kendall Square in Cambridge is thriving, and so can Providence."

Last year the Rhode Island Foundation, with Shekarchi's backing, recommended spending $50 million to build a government-industry partnership to promote life sciences. And this year Gov. Dan McKee put $45 million in federal pandemic aid toward that cause in his state budget proposal for next year.

More: RI leaders want to build life-sciences industry using Massachusetts biotech model

McKee joined Shekarchi, Rhode Island Foundation CEO Neil Steinberg and a panel of biotech industry participants to stump for the spending Monday in Providence.

Precisely how the money would be spent is not clear.

The budget's executive summary says the money would pay for a program that "would include the development of one or more wet-lab incubator spaces ... and the creation of a fund to provide wraparound services to aid inthe commercialization of technology and business development and growth of the biosciences talent pipeline."

Asked after the event who would control the money, Shekarchi said it could be a new quasi-state agency or division within the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation.

"We are going to look at what has worked in other communities. I am open to all ideas," he said.

McKee noted that Rhode Island has looked wistfully at Massachusetts' biotech industry for more than a decade.

The biotech event was held at the Wexford Science and Technology building on Dyer Street, built in part with state money that Gov. Gina Raimondo hoped would make Providence's Jewelry District a hub for technology companies. Years before, state leaders tried unsuccessfully to rename the area "The Knowledge District" to get firms to move there.

The top two floors of the building are set to become laboratories, with Brown University filling one of the floors.

Brown and the McKee administration are teaming up to help fund the construction of another laboratory building next door, which will house a new $82-million State Health Lab, more Brown research facilities and hopefully private companies.

Joining McKee and Shekarchi at the event Monday was Justin Fallon, co-founder of Bolden Therapeutics, which is working on ways to grow new neurons in brains that have Alzheimer's disease. He explained why Bolden, which was founded by Brown researchers, moved to Cambridge.

"When you have an early company you have to have good ideas and then people who are going to work on that, and then you need resources, money, but also you need laboratories, wet laboratories where you can do experiments," Fallon said. "That type of space is absolutely crucial, and that was not here in 2019 when Bolden was founded."

He said he is sure if the kind of laboratories that exist in Cambridge are built in Providence, companies will take advantage of it.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: State leaders seek to make RI a hub for bioscience