Ditto.

Certainly bio-tech, perhaps new technology, and other hoped/planned/anticipated growth has not occurred in S. Lake Union. There is no denying it's in better shape as a part of the city, with more opportunity to add to the cities value - than it was...we'll see what happens. I think it will surprise us all and be a place that business migrates and redefines the city.

Interestingly - one thing we seem to have an abundance of is old hacks who now practice their diminishing trade of critiquing everything from restaurants to government to business to architecture to urban planning to to to to. Topics upon which they believe they are qualified to comment, having done absolutely nothing of real value themselves.

32 year old city-wide low income housing - uh, are you telling me all the money we've dumped into that hole has produced success?

This article is a good example of why biotech leaders need to pay attention to local races. Having someone in local government -- and by "local" I mean from the city through to the state -- who understands the business cycle of development stage biotechnology would be helpful.

John makes a couple of points I don't disagree with, but misses the fact the biotech industry nationwide has been in a major slump since 2007. The worldwide credit crisis caused investors to pull money out of the biotech sector to service mandated liquidity requirements on bad mortgage loans, leaving the sector with too little money available to finance growth.

Additionally, the life cycle of biotech companies continues to elude politicians and journalists -- including Mr. Fox. Success in this space most often means the companies are bought. Immunex, Icos, Corixa -- these are all homegrown, large biotechs who were acquired by larger companies. They are no longer here, which makes it appear to the casual observer our efforts to grow biotech are not working. But the capital injected into our economy from the buyouts have created subsequent generations of companies that will, hopefully, fill their place.

These are not the tech companies that we are used to, and I freely grant John's argument politicians oversold because they didn't understand this fundamental fact. Perhaps one in 30-50 tech companies grows to something most people would recognize as a successful company. In the biotech space, it might be one in 500-1000. We simply don't understand the human body as well as we understand circuits and software, so the failure rate is higher. Accompany this with a huge capital need because of the expense of meeting regulations intened to ensure drugs and devices produced are safe and effective, and you have a high-turnover business model that is not very good at quickly generating the big, visible companies politicians need to be able to see, "look what *I* did."

That's not to say our system is blameless. The infrastructure issues John mentions are very real, emblematic of a culture at City Hall where we build first and hope the infrastrucutre/concurrency issues take care of themselves. The State Legislature has too long ignored the utter failure of UW Tech Transfer to get its internal house in order. The UW likes to brag how many patents it generates, but my response has always been "who cares if businesspeople cannot reasonably, quickly, and cheaply get those patents out of your tight grip and do something with them that benefits our economy?" Local company Dendreon is hiring hundreds of new employees to help market its soon-to-be-approved prostate cancer drug Provenge, but there was no team of City/State/County officials on their doorstep making sure that headcount stayed in Seattle instead of going to New Jersey, Atlanta, and Orange County.

The good news is I believe things are getting better. New staff at UW Tech Transfer is making a difference, though they could certainly use our state and national leaders' help to cut through resistance inside the academic community there. Local officials are more open to listening to individuals in the community with biotech expertise. New leadership at the WBBA trade association is helping advance the commercialization conversation. Above all, the financing window for biotech is reopening, albeit slowly. The first biotech IPO in two years (TWO YEARS!) happened earlier this year, and local companies like Dendreon, ZymoGenetics, Seattle Genetics, Targeted Genetics, and others have been able to do deals to bring in needed cash.

It does not at all surprise me our investments in biotech haven't made it to the topline numbers John cites. The average drug takes over a decade to bring to market. Of all drugs entering human clinical trials, nearly 90% never see FDA approval.

Finally, John's biotech numbers don't reflect the major gains we have made in the global health sector. Seattle is the #2 spot on the globe for world health efforts, providing thousands of living-wage jobs and helping communities accross the planet. It's work we can be morally proud of that also generates a significant economic benefit to our city -- and none of it shows up in the biotech numbers John cites.

This is long term, slow burn business here. The politicians may have erred in not selling it that way, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make the investments necessary to make biotech a larger part of our business mix in Seattle.

Well, looks like David covered everything, but here's another note about global health. During a recent visit to SLU-based Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (SBRI), humanitarian Paul Farmer said our local biomedical research institutions have "performed CPR on international health" by focusing on global diseases like tuberculosis and malaria:
http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/04/24/seattle-has-performed-cpr-on-global-health-says-famed-doctor-paul-farmer/

PATH has also targeted preventable diseases like cervical cancer, which
kills 75,000 women a year in India alone.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/seattlesketcher/2009477971_path.html

By using a "bottom of the pyramid" mentality, these non-profits are making a real difference in world health by developing low-cost solutions that anyone can afford.

While there may not be tens of thousands of jobs here, I believe they were worth the public investment in such basic services as water and electricity. (And as far as I know, no biotech is asking for the Mercer work.)

This article describes the boosterish way in which the City of Seattle has promoted a bubble industry—biotechnology—as a Trojan horse in order to extend massive commercial and residential development north from downtown to Lake Union and south from downtown into Pioneer Square and SODO.

The Growth Management Act allows local jurisdictions to require developers to pay impact fees to pay for the expansion of public infrastructure to accommodate growth. Unfortunately, impact fees can only be used for streets and roads, open space, parks and recreation, school facilities, and fire protection. Many local governments mainly use them to pay for transportation impacts. Because of this, Seattle taxpayers will be the ones picking up the tab for the upgraded SPU and City Light facilities built to support the anticipated but not realized expansion of biotech in SLU. These expenditures are on top of equally frivolous expenditures for the SLUT and the $240,000,000 makeover of six blocks of Mercer Street into what is touted by some as a Parisian style boulevard. Although Paul Allen partially funded the SLUT, taxpayers are paying for practically everything else, thereby directly benefitting one of the wealthiest men on the planet and principal liege lord of soon-to-be-ex Mayor Greg Nickels.

In the same way that “ghost bikes” are in some cities, including Seattle, placed at locations where cyclists have died in bike accidents, it would be great if local artists could install ghostly representations of “ghost apartments” to signify locations where formerly affordable housing was knocked down and replaced shiny new and mostly unaffordable buildings in SLU.

As for the biotech industry, its success has been underwhelming worldwide for a variety of reasons touched on here…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katie-hood/as-the-biotech-bubble-pop_b_160389.html

…the most fundamental of which is that biology is hard--very hard--compared to run of the mill high tech.

Let's not do too much Monday-morning-quarterbacking here. Think how ill-served the city would have been had the various interests NOT done anything at the time they crossed the decision threshold.

"Irresponsible" and "short-sighted" don't begin to describe the situation had the various governments and investors sat on their hands because the Magic 8-Ball said "future uncertain."

I don't like the Amazon building much. Buildings that border bodies of water should not block views from buildings further away. The Amazon building is ego-centric and inconsiderate by design. I wonder does it reflect the personal character of Amazon directors? Ahh, Amazon painted a huge sign, like 6 billboards wide, "Amazon, not big enough" on a grain elevator in Portland. Amazon's owner must be compensating for having a small penis.

With all due respect, Mr. Fox’s piece overly simplifies the realities in the biotech sector to render much of this article misleading.

First of all, the biopharmaceutical sector specifically is responsible for more than 67,600 jobs in Washington, as well as about $10.5 billion in economic activity each year. Biopharma R&D; investment represents $916.5 million. The number of active clinical trials supported by Washington biopharma exceeds 2,191. Those aren’t small figures.

During the decade between 1996 and 2006, the national annual growth rate of direct employment in the biopharmaceuticals sector was more than double that of the entire national economy. In Washington, jobs in this sector grew by nearly 5%, compared to 1.7% for the rest of Washington’s private sector job growth during the same decade. Yes, for the last two years, that pace has definitely slowed, developing innovative drugs is a risky business, especially in the current economy.

The promising job growth of the industry no longer appears to be a rocket to the moon, but there is no question that biotech is still emerging as an American industry leader. Another example of this was the grand opening that I attended this morning at the new Novo-Nordisk Inflammation Research Center at South Lake Union. Novo-Nordisk is one of the leading biopharma companies in the world, and built this sight because of the talent, research and promise that Seattle offers compared to all of the other cities in the world they considered. www.xconomy.com

Secondly, global health institutions and both corporate, as well as non-profit, support organizations that have grown up around them, have not only turned the world’s attention to Seattle, they have made tangible, measurable advancements in medical science. There is an increasing merging occurring between the work going on in global health, and the rest of our life science industry in Washington. Many now realize that what affects citizens health care in developing nations, affects Washingtonians, and vice-versa.

South Lake Union is no different from other parts of the city where the economic slowdown has created job loss and economic instability. Downtown Seattle vacancies rates are higher than they have been in 20 years after the country’s largest mortgage bank went bankrupt. But no one is pointing to the failure of Washington Mutual and blaming local elected leaders for developing light rail.

Chris Rivera, President
Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association

A few years back California voted a big bond issue to develop a giant stem cell research industry. Discoveries were supposed to be quick and dramatic. The only opposition was dismissed as a bunch of religious fanatics.

In fact, it seems, California bought a bag of sand, a multi-billion dollar bag of sand, with multi-billions of dollars it didn't have and couldn't afford, and now badly needs.

Companies with a real products for a real markets don't need charity start up funds from the public via friendly politicians. People should have seen that something was wrong here.

There is also no accounting for or credit given for the the synergies created. When the railroads finally reached Seattle, and as logging grew, the UW built facilities to teach Mechanical Engineering and Forestry. As Boeing developed, UW added wind tunnels.

The UW Hosptial and it's ties to other area hospitals have helped to build a base for biotech to build on. Everyone in this stream seems to overlook the Cancer Care Allience... with more beds to offer bone marrow transplants than most major cities combined.

Not saying we as taxpayers should underwrite Vulcan et al, but just a note biotech buildings have to be built to some code standards. As new companies grow and develop, to have the infrastructure in place is an added incentive to bring these folks here.
There is a certain truth to the line, "if you build it, they will come..."

Interesting, too, that no one in this stream mentioned the 900 new jobs Russell is bringing, taking the nicely developed space WAMU created...

Frankly, the idea of John Fox commenting on the economics of South Lake Union is just nuts. The guy spent 20 years of his life trying to prevent any development there that would drive up rents in aging apartment buildings. And now he's going to say "That development is terrible- and there's nowhere near enough of it!"

I think Crosscut will do themselves a great disservice by becoming the go-to place for people who want to read John Fox.