Research park proves strong business lure

FORT COLLINS –Bruce Laramie knows a good thing when he sees it.
Laramie operates two companies, Stonewell & Associates Inc. and Connecting Point, within the Centre for Advanced Technology, a mixed-use business and research park located on 235 acres adjacent to Colorado State University.
The park enables companies to benefit not only from proximity to the university but also from the university’s faculty, students, computer networks, research libraries and telecommunications and data systems.
“Locating in the Centre has proven to be a wise decision by enabling us to interact with the university in ways that we otherwise might not enjoy,´ said Laramie, who also operates the University Technology Store in CSU’s Lory Student Center.
The Centre for Advanced Technology is managed jointly by the Everitt Cos. and CSURF, the Colorado State University Research Foundation.
“The idea behind the research park is to provide a place where companies could locate and be close to campus and enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the university,´ said Kathleen Byington, chief executive officer of CSURF.
CSURF supports research and educational programs at schools within Colorado State University.
Byington said the Centre attracts businesses for a variety of reasons.
“There are a lot of resources these businesses located in the park can take advantage of that they might not have access to otherwise,” she said.
Proximity to CSU and its research institutions is one attraction. Byington noted that the Centre is adjacent to both CSU and the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, which can benefit companies researching animal products such as feeds and medicines.
Additionally, a pool of graduate students and faculty is available to Centre tenants.
“Our philosophy is that with careful planning the research park can serve the needs of CSU and the business community for the rest of this century and well into the next,” Byington said.
The Everitt Cos. owns Centre Tech, a multibuilding, 43,000-square foot complex that winds along Research Boulevard and is now home to 20 companies, about 80 percent of which are high-tech or university-related.
Everitt vice president and Centre for Advanced Technology project manager Tom Livingston said Centre Tech has evolved into an incubator of sorts. “Centre Tech offers emerging and growing companies an environment which provides them with a high-profile image, flexibility for growth and expansion, and affordable rents,” he said.
Livingston, who was on the team that master-planned the research park in 1986, said the university relationship has helped to market existing buildings and vacant land in the 90-acre parcel bounded by Drake Road and Shields Street that Everitt Co. owns.
“It is safe to say that if you look at our land absorption rate, a significant part of that occurred between Summit Biotech, Centre Tech and National Technological University, which collectively accounts for about 12 acres of land,” Livingston said. “So roughly one-third of the land we have absorbed thus far has gone to companies who are defininitely there because of and are benefitting from ` the university.”
Livingston said the relationships vary from contractural — an interagency atmospheric-research project ­ to personal, such as Tom and Catherine Smith’s company, Summit Plant Laboratories.
Tom Smith is a graduate of the university’s Plant Pathology Department, and the company continues to work with Dr. Sarah Ward of CSU’s crop-research department in implementing cutting-edge DNA fingerprinting technology for use in future in-house virus-detection purposes, Catherine Smith said.
Summit Plant’s primary business is the propagation of potatoes and mint varieties from tissue samples.
“We currently have 43 varieties of potatoes and 14 varieties of mint available, both spearmint and peppermint,” Thomas Smith said. “All the stocks for mint-oil production in the U.S. originate with us.”

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