The Missouri BioBelt / The TechBelt Initiative

Cleveland and St. Louis have more in common than residents of either city would readily admit.  St. Louis is staking its future on life sciences, and so is Cleveland.  St. Louis has the Wash U Medical Center.  Cleveland has the Cleveland Clinic. 

Biotech is a weird industry because it is so varied.  California and New England are the champs with all the brains and companies, but out in Flyover County medium sized cities are trying to carve out little pieces of the sector to call their own. 

It doesn't seem like a place like Cleveland could ever compete in the big leagues, but it is.  With things like Team NEO and BioEnterprise, they're trying to incorporate the wider region into their efforts with places like Akron and Youngstown.  They're doing ok.  They have the incredible plan to open a convention center dedicated exclusively to medical events.  Building the Cleveland Medical Mart and Conference Center is a very interesting move.  Not only will it cement the legitimacy of Cleveland as a center of medical excellence, but it will also attract out-of-town visitors and money which translates into a healthier hotel and tourism industry and an increase in sales tax revenue.



It's possible that the facility could encourage medical companies from across the country to expand or relocate there to be in proximity to the buying and selling of medical devices and programs.  The future will tell how effective this is.

Cleveland is also quite smartly reaching out to Pittsburgh and the great pool of talent in that city.

The plan, called the TechBelt Initiative, is an attempt to coordinate technology investments in the region between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.  They have an impressive list of venture funds and research universities signed up for the effort.  It's an umbrella group that is willing to focus on a lot more than just biomedical research.  They're looking at robotics and manufacturing too.  It's a flexible partnership working across state lines.

Their map is remarkably similar to one visible at the website of the Missouri Life Sciences Project.   

Missouri isn't a top ranking state in biotech, but the state still wants to develop its life sciences as its main economic strategy.

St. Louis is a leader in plant science.  Monsanto, the Corn and Soybean Associations, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Danforth Plant Science Center, etc. meet up with a large collection of incubators and venture funds to make a pretty potent research force.  They're even making a new neighborhood in midtown called the CORTEX District, which is supposed to be the nexus of all the life science activity in the region.

The greatest rumor of all is that they may get their own light rail station.

Looking out beyond St. Louis, Kansas City is the obvious partner of choice.  The extent of that partnership becomes clear with maps from bio-link.org, Missouri does seem to be a leader of sorts.

The suburbs of St. Louis stretch west.  The suburbs of Kansas City stretch south.  The various research parks and ag companies go along with them.  The small town of Joplin in the southwestern corner of the state has been slowly building its own industries along the same lines. 

The University of Missouri is located in Columbia, directly between St. Louis and Kansas City on I-70.  Mizzou has a med school, a powerful life science program, and an agriculture program.  Columbia has a very educated population and is in close proximity to the state capital.  Columbia is to the Missouri BioBelt what Youngstown is to the TechBelt.  Clearly on the maps above though Columbia has a bit more going for it than Youngstown in the life sciences.

The TechBelt has a lot to teach the BioBelt.  The TechBelt is a coalition of groups dedicated to a general mutual cooperation agreement between three cities.  It's flexible and linear.  The BioBelt is a large collection of overlapping organizations promoting specific kinds of life science research statewide or in specific cities.  Many individual partnerships make something of a large web of connections, but it isn't very linear.  Joplin and the rest of the state get to play too.  Maybe this isn't so bad.  Maybe the Missouri BioBelt can become a Missouri BioTriangle.  It is an awfully big triangle though.

The TechBelt has a flexible mission, but clear geography.  The BioBelt has a clear mission, but flexible geography.  From the perspective of urban development, the TechBelt concentrates efforts in specific cities in order to strengthen a number of diverse common industries while the BioBelt spreads its money wide on a common sector.  The former can build strong cities, the second may contribute to sprawl and an undermining of the benefits of density. 

The TechBelt is in two states, while the BioBelt is mostly limited to one.  Trancending state boundaries is difficult.  Kansas and Illinois are both well developed in life science industries.  The Illinois-Missouri Biotech Alliance is a good program, but both states are far too big. 

No development in St. Louis has jumped across the state border into the Metro-East.  The second largest metro area in Illinois hasn't been invested in.

In contrast, Kansas City, Kansas seems just as successful as Kansas City, Missouri.  The questions is though if KC, K is more eager to connect with St. Louis or Wichita.