And like most jobs these days it's two jobs in one - score biotech investment, and meanwhile be in charge of moneying-up one of the URAs. Multilevel wrongness, here - nice find.

From that other piece:

"Colin Sears, Economic Development Manager at PDC who will oversee the bioscience program for PDC"

PDC will allocate $3.5 million of tax-increment funds under the agreement to joint OHSU-PDC initiatives aimed at raising the profile of the district as “a cutting-edge bioscience research, development and commercialization center”

The plan calls for OHSU and PDC to explore, among other initiatives, the development of a bioscience business accelerator/incubator facility in the URA.
Recruiting out-of-state bioscience companies who will benefit from synergies of locating in close proximity to OHSU.”

So as long as they "explore" it will be a success.

Funny thing is they're going backwards with recruiting by losing one of their r own research centers to Florida.
http://bojack.org/2008/01/finally_ohsu_biotech_jobs.html

the air portland may be clean, but it is corrupted in politics

the goal to develope biotech may be hip, but smart people do not go to portland and act like ignorant "king of hill"

there are standford, ucsf, harvard, princeton and mit

sorry

p.s.

but there are plenty of strip clubs....

Beyond what has already been spent to lure biotech to SoWhat, the present to 2020 budget has $59 Million allocated for "incentive programs" to encourage biotech to come to SoWhat.

In a recent SoWhat URAC meeting, PDC staff and Colin Sears hyped the necessity of spending this high percentage of money.

In the recent North Macadam URA FY 2008/09 Budget and Forecast Resource Allocation Summary:FY 200ll/12 and FY 2012/13, 41% of the budget is allocated to the New Initiatives Development Opportunity Fund and New Initiatives Economic Development. These programs are to encourage biotech jobs. Only 11% is allocated to Parks, Open Space & Greenway and 11% to Transportation Improvements.

Sears said PDC estimates that these biotech incentive dollars have returns between 15 to 20 times. The obvious question is, "Then where are the biotech jobs in SoWhat?" For example, the taxpayers gave OHSU $5 million for biotech jobs in the OHSU Sport Club building next to the tram. There is not one biotech job. The taxpayers certainly haven't seen the $75M to $100M return on their investment from the building as Sears promises. It doesn't even pay taxes of any kind.

http://www.ohsu.edu/ohsuedu/newspub/releases/041207bioscience.cfm

Here is OHSU's companion release, I wonder how much of the $3.5 million is left.

Maybe most of the $3.5 million was spent by the Oregon Bioscience Association and PDC staff in the big bioscience conferences and tradeshows held recently in Europe and back east.

Lee, you don't understand. The jobs generated with these millions will "incubate" on the waterfront, hatch, and then "migrate" west to Hillsboro or south to Florida to feed on new subsidies. A few million bucks is a small price to pay for such natural beauty.

We need an initiative to simply shut down the PDC and force our elected officials to assume full responsibility for their boondoggles.

The savings on personnel costs alone would allow us to bribe a few legitimate biotech firms into relocating.

If I was asked and compensated for at least five of those national and international conferences and tradeshows, I would consider posting less about SoWhat and PDC. Wink, wink.

"...aimed at raising the profile of the district as “a cutting-edge bioscience research, development and commercialization center”

Silly question I have - How can something be "cutting-edge" when there is nothing there? Is the health club really THAT good?

I can see the pitch already - "Hey Mr. Bioscience Company CEO, we have a cutting-edge research and development center that you simply MUST be a part of. It has the streets and sewers already in. JACKPOT!"

Larry, the argument that the taxpayers have already contributed to incentives for economic development in SoWhat has been made several times to PDC and the URAC. It has been pointed out that over $85 Million in just TIF dollars have so far been spent to provide streets, sewers, trolleys, trams, sidewalks, land purchase for a park, etc. These tax dollars are normally not spent in other projects in the "free enterprise world". The developers pay for them. When taxpayers have been told they must contribute $288 Million total to SoWhat, not counting all the other forms of tax dollars, many of us think that we have contributed more than enough to "economic development". How many gimmies must we give?

Believe me, Lee, I'm on the same side of this argument as you. I wam just amused how people spin things. "cutting edge" cracked me up.