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California pharma co. Bionova plans expansion to The Woodlands
A California-based biotechnology firm could be the latest addition to a growing life sciences economy in The Woodlands and the greater Houston region if a local tax abatement goes through.
San Francisco-based Bionova Scientific applied for a tax abatement in Montgomery County, according to a notice published on the Montgomery County Commissioners Court agenda on April 5.
The publicly disclosed terms of the abatement state that the company plans $56.1 million in renovations for a 100,000-square-foot facility in the Research Forest development in The Woodlands. Aventus Development LLC is also listed on the public notice.
Montgomery County Attorney B.D. Griffin told the Houston Business Journal that the facility street address on Bionova's application is 2625 Research Forest Drive. However, the Montgomery Central Appraisal District lists the corresponding parcel at 2501 Research Forest Drive, which is across the street.
Griffin said that following a 30-day period from April 5, the abatement could be discussed at the May 7 session of Montgomery County Commissioners Court. Terms of the abatement, such as the amount of jobs Bionova aims to create and the amount of abated property taxes, are confidential until the agreement is executed, per state law, Griffin said in an email.
The HBJ reached out to Bionova CEO Darren Head and co-founder Chung Chun about potential applications of the facility but did not receive a response before press time.
Bionova was acquired in 2022 by a U.S. subsidiary of Japan-based Asahi Kahei Medical.
Gil Staley, CEO of The Woodlands Economic Development Partnership, told the Houston Business Journal that the effort to bring Bionova to this stage has taken two years.
“The type of companies we’re looking at fit the assets we already have,” Staley said in an interview at The Woodlands Innovation District Life Sciences Forum and Expo. “They’re well capitalized, well-funded.”
Bionova’s interest in the area follows concerted effort to grow The Woodlands as a different option for life sciences companies compared to similar growth at the Texas Medical Center and other campuses in the Houston area.
When the Alexandria Center for Advanced Technologies at The Woodlands opened in November 2023, Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. founder and Executive Chair Joel Marcus said he wants the area to become a home for commercial research.
Alexandria had previously worked on developing the Research Triangle life science ecosystem in North Carolina.
Meanwhile, another California-based company was an early leader in the Research Forest rebirth. Cellipont Bioservices, previously based in San Diego, opened its 76,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and new headquarters at 9501 Lakeside Blvd. in March. The project was announced in August 2022.
One cool thing about this is that the research forest neighborhood is finally getting back to research. It was long a successful site but started steering away. Theres the life science companies many of which moved from Cali. There’s the Disney digital center. Through a series of acquisitions, AonHewitt is now Agilent Solutions which takes HR software. Research forest is finally living up to its name.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SanJac
This would be nice...
California pharma co. Bionova plans expansion to The Woodlands
A California-based biotechnology firm could be the latest addition to a growing life sciences economy in The Woodlands and the greater Houston region if a local tax abatement goes through.
San Francisco-based Bionova Scientific applied for a tax abatement in Montgomery County, according to a notice published on the Montgomery County Commissioners Court agenda on April 5.
The publicly disclosed terms of the abatement state that the company plans $56.1 million in renovations for a 100,000-square-foot facility in the Research Forest development in The Woodlands. Aventus Development LLC is also listed on the public notice.
Montgomery County Attorney B.D. Griffin told the Houston Business Journal that the facility street address on Bionova's application is 2625 Research Forest Drive. However, the Montgomery Central Appraisal District lists the corresponding parcel at 2501 Research Forest Drive, which is across the street.
Griffin said that following a 30-day period from April 5, the abatement could be discussed at the May 7 session of Montgomery County Commissioners Court. Terms of the abatement, such as the amount of jobs Bionova aims to create and the amount of abated property taxes, are confidential until the agreement is executed, per state law, Griffin said in an email.
The HBJ reached out to Bionova CEO Darren Head and co-founder Chung Chun about potential applications of the facility but did not receive a response before press time.
Bionova was acquired in 2022 by a U.S. subsidiary of Japan-based Asahi Kahei Medical.
Gil Staley, CEO of The Woodlands Economic Development Partnership, told the Houston Business Journal that the effort to bring Bionova to this stage has taken two years.
“The type of companies we’re looking at fit the assets we already have,” Staley said in an interview at The Woodlands Innovation District Life Sciences Forum and Expo. “They’re well capitalized, well-funded.”
Bionova’s interest in the area follows concerted effort to grow The Woodlands as a different option for life sciences companies compared to similar growth at the Texas Medical Center and other campuses in the Houston area.
When the Alexandria Center for Advanced Technologies at The Woodlands opened in November 2023, Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. founder and Executive Chair Joel Marcus said he wants the area to become a home for commercial research.
Alexandria had previously worked on developing the Research Triangle life science ecosystem in North Carolina.
Meanwhile, another California-based company was an early leader in the Research Forest rebirth. Cellipont Bioservices, previously based in San Diego, opened its 76,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and new headquarters at 9501 Lakeside Blvd. in March. The project was announced in August 2022.
In nine years, the health care industry has grown from 18 to 30% of The Woodlands’ workforce as it diversified out of energy and brought in five major hospitals. That is by definition economic diversity.
Research hub in the forest
Woodlands seeks to attract biotech companies with new innovation district
The Woodlands aims to become a key cog in Houston’s cancer-fighting machine with more than 80 acres of future biotech development.
The new Woodlands Innovation District is a reimagining of what has been known as The Research Forest, which was first pitched as a future life sciences hub in the 1980s by founder George Mitchell.
Developer Howard Hughes is accelerating growth in the district through a partnership with Vitrian, which builds biomanufacturing facilities across the country.
Approximately $400 million in biomanufacturing facility investments have been made in The Woodlands and Conroe area, Nudelman said. Facilities could range from 40,000 to more than 200,000 square feet per site. Total square footage could total 1 million square feet and host hundreds of jobs across income levels, Nudelman said.
In nine years, the health care industry has grown from 18 to 30% of The Woodlands’ workforce as it diversified out of energy and brought in five major hospitals. That is by definition economic diversity.
Research hub in the forest
Woodlands seeks to attract biotech companies with new innovation district
The Woodlands aims to become a key cog in Houston’s cancer-fighting machine with more than 80 acres of future biotech development.
The new Woodlands Innovation District is a reimagining of what has been known as The Research Forest, which was first pitched as a future life sciences hub in the 1980s by founder George Mitchell.
Developer Howard Hughes is accelerating growth in the district through a partnership with Vitrian, which builds biomanufacturing facilities across the country.
Approximately $400 million in biomanufacturing facility investments have been made in The Woodlands and Conroe area, Nudelman said. Facilities could range from 40,000 to more than 200,000 square feet per site. Total square footage could total 1 million square feet and host hundreds of jobs across income levels, Nudelman said.
Greater Houston ranks 5th in innovation among national MSA's. No other Texas metro was in the top 15.Not DFW not Austin. This is a study from BushEds which is a project of former President George W Bush and SMU university which of course is located in Dallas. It must have hurt them to release this report which basically says we're not that innovative up here according to this report.
Metro-area innovation impact (BushEds) scores: Table 3 shows the 15 best-performing metro areas in
the United States for total university innovation impact, which we refer to as “BushEds” scores. A metro’s
BushEds score is simply the sum of the innovation impact scores for each of the individual institutions
located there.***
* Institutions with medical schools outperform for productivity in producing spinout companies as well as
bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. students, but modestly underperform for overall innovation impact
productivity. This may be because academic medical centers devote significant research resources to
clinical trials, which don’t tend to generate innovation impact as we measure it here.
** The average share of research spending funded by industry between 2016 and 2020 among 177
institutions was 7.4%, while the median industry funding share was 5.6%. Just 16 institutions covered
more than 15% of research spending from industry grants. These include several major academic
medical centers but mostly consist of regional universities with smaller research budgets. See data on
individual institutions and regression results in online Data Appendix. *** We apportion the innovation scores for seven university system – the University of California, University
of Texas, University of Maryland, University of Colorado, University of Massachusetts, and State
University of New York systems plus that part of the University of Wisconsin System not accounted for by
48
Table 3
Best Performing Metros for BushEds: Metro-Area Innovation Impac
1 Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH 113.8 23.2
2 New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA 79.4 4.0
3 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 57.1 4.4
4 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 43.8 7.0
5 Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX 39.9 5.5
6 San Francisco-Oakla nd-Berkeley, CA 39.5 8.5
7 Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI 34.0 3.6
8 Pittsburgh, PA 32.1 13.6
9 Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD 30.8 10.8
10 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 29.9 7.4
11 Durham-Chapel Hill, NC 28.4 43.4
12 Ann Arbor, MI 27.6 74.6
13 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 24.8 6.7
14 Gainesville, FL 22.9 67.1
15 San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA 22.6 6.9
Average for all Metros > 0 10.8 15.1
A new business started in a U.T. dorm on a wing and a prayer is taking off in Fort Bend County bringing technology to the agricultural sector and economic diversity to the Greater Houston economy.
Houston-area agricultural drone company started in a UT dorm room. Now it's ready for liftoff.
On a gray and muggy afternoon, several hundred handsome black cattle went about their business at the Wodagyu Ranch in Richmond, seemingly undisturbed by the beeps and buzzing overhead.
"They're certainly used to it," said Arthur Erickson, co-founder and CEO of agricultural drone company Hylio, which he and several friends began in a dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin about 10 years ago.
The big advantage of using drones to apply chemicals, Erickson continued, is that it costs less than using a tractor or airplane. The equipment is cheaper to own and operate, to start, and carries little risk of the collateral damage that can undercut a farmer's yields and, by extension, profits.
Hylio is currently selling about 40 drones a month, Erickson said, with packages including the drone, its controller and software starting at $20,000 for its most compact model, the AG-210, which has a 2.5-gallon tank and can cover about 15 acres in an hour. The company's largest model, the AG-272, has a capacity of 18 gallons and bills itself as "the biggest spray drone on the market."
The agricultural drone market is currently valued at $3.6 billion, according to Drone Industry Insights, a trade group. And by all accounts, it is poised for dramatic growth in the coming years.
Hylio, which is privately held, is poised to capture part of that. In February, the company received an exemption from the Federal Aviation Administration, allowing up to three of its drones to be flown in concert by a single operator. It is the first company to receive that exemption, which raises the potential for greater efficiency in spraying large areas.
In addition to that, the biggest player in the commercial drone space, the Chinese firm DJI, has come under scrutiny from lawmakers who consider it a security threat, which has spurred many American farmers and ranchers to look for alternative drone manufacturers.
Erickson, for his part, says Hylio is planning for fivefold growth over the next two years, if not sooner.
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