NCC NBAFQ: Scott Carr, Interviewer
Arden: Warwick Arden, Interviewee
Q: Well, the Granville County town of Butner has been chosen now as one of five finalists for a $450 million Department of Homeland Security germ lab. Now, several US Representatives from North Carolina announcing last week the town will compete against San Antonio, Texas; Athens, Georgia; Manhattan, Kansas; and Madison County, Mississippi for a 520,000 square foot facility that will replace the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in New York. Scientists at the research lab will study killer germs like anthrax and foot and mouth disease to ensure they don’t make their way into the US food supply. The town of Butner, a few miles northeast of Durham, made the cut from a list of 18 locations nationwide after a group of business and academic leaders led by the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University made a pitch for the labs. And one of the people integral to that effort joins us now at stategovernmentradio.com, the Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at NC State, Warwick Arden. Thanks for coming on, sir. I guess, you know, first of all it would be interesting to find out more about this consortium. Tell me how your school has been working in concert with this consortium to communicate with, I guess, a variety of different groups, but of course the Department of Homeland Security would be one of them.
Arden: Yes, Scott. Early last year when the announcement was made that the Department of Homeland Security were looking to locate this facility, we began in the College of Veterinary Medicine to assemble a consortium that broadly represented academia, industry and government sectors in North Carolina. And we’ve had some wonderful partnerships to bring this together. So most of the major universities in central North Carolina are involved, as are many of the state government sectors—the Governor’s Office, Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce—as well as private sector and not-for-profit organizations such as the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. Agribusiness is also strongly represented—North Carolina Agribusiness Council, Cattlemen’s Association, dairy producers, poultry producers, swine producers. And so this really is a broad consortium that brings together all of those groups. I think that’s one of the strengths of the consortium.
Q: I imagine a large part of your mission and communications have been putting together arguments for why Butner in North Carolina would be a good place for them to locate this lab.
Arden: Yeah, you know, it’s actually quite easy to make a strong case for central North Carolina. If you look at the original announcement, there were four criteria for locating this lab. One was opportunity for research collaborations; one was workforce training; another one was local community acceptance, and then the fourth was some land acquisition issues. If you look at the first three, and particularly the first two, there are very few areas in the country that surpass us in terms of collaborative research opportunities within a 20-30 mile radius of this proposed facility site. You have two of the country’s leading medical schools, one of the country’s leading colleges of veterinary medicine, one of the country’s leading public health schools, leading agriculture schools, so you have a very, very rich research collaborative environment, and then the whole Research Triangle as well, all the corporations located in the Research Triangle. In fact, data shows that central North Carolina is the third largest and most rapidly growing biotechnology cluster in the country. So that is really a very easy argument to make. On the second, which is workforce training, we have a wonderful community college system. We also have specifically within that system, a biotechnology training program that interfaces with the major universities, preparing people to work exactly in these kinds of biotechnology fields. So we have a wonderful interface and a wonderful training program. Much of the success of these laboratories is not just having great scientists, but it is also having a well qualified, well trained staff to work with those scientists, look after the animals, look after the labs, so that is the second factor that we feel is very strong. The third is community acceptance, and the people of Granville County and Butner really have accepted this, and I think not just because of the economic impact, which is substantial, but also because there is a history of a strong state and federal presence there. So really, making the arguments has been quite easy here.
Q: All right. We’ll have to take a break, but we’ll, coming up, take a look at that expected economic impact if the Department of Homeland Security decides to locate it in Butner. We’ll be right back on stategovernmentradio.com.
Q: I’m Scott Carr, and we’re back with the Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University, Warwick Arden, who has been helping to make a pitch for a new $450 million germ study lab the Department of Homeland Security is going to open in the next few years. A list of potential sites whittled down to five, one of them Butner, North Carolina in Granville County. Tell me a little bit about the economic benefits that would come to that region and North Carolina if indeed the lab was located in Butner, and about how long would it take before you got an inclination as to a decision?
Arden: With respect to the economic impact the building itself is projected to be about a $450 million project, at its peak employing well over 1,000 laborers, building and construction laborers, to build this facility. So the initial construction has quite a significant economic impact. Long term, over the next 20 years, estimates of long term economic impact from having up to 200 additional scientists and staff members in the area vary very much from state to state. In North Carolina we are fairly conservative and we estimate it somewhere between $1.5-2 billion. Other states have estimated it as high as $6 billion economic impact. So the economic impact is quite significant. I think there is also a sort of spin-off and intangible part to the economic impact that’s very, very hard to quantitate. And that is what happens with the interactions that are seen with our scientists working at Duke, Chapel Hill, NC State and other universities, increased grant activity, spin-off corporation, bio-sector corporations… So it just creates a very, very rich academic, very fertile research environment, much in the same way as having the EPA, NIHS and other corporations in the Triangle have done. So it’s really a multiplicative effect, and those things are quite difficult to quantitate at this stage. Timing-wise we expect a decision within 12-15 months. The Department of Homeland Security have indicated they really want to get this decision made before the current administration leaves office at the end of 2008, so we would expect that they will move fairly quickly on the next phase and make a decision in late 2008.
Q: And correct me if I’m wrong, but the mission of this lab, biotechnology sums up a good part of what is at the heart of it, right?
Arden: In essence the lab will replace the current facility on Plum Island. But it has served the country very, very well for 50 years in protecting the country from foreign animal diseases. This new facility ____ also have an expanded mission and that is to help protect public health.
Q: Warwick Arden is the Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University in Raleigh who is leading a group of business and academic leaders to make a pitch for a new $450 million germ lab that could be located in Butner through the Department of Homeland Security. Thanks for speaking with us.
Arden: Thank you very much, Scott.
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