Experts say auto park's job potential huge

e-mail this story to a friend Related Previous coverage • Auto research site could create up to 20,000 new jobs (Aug. 2002)

If the International Center for Automotive Research reaches the national average for employment at university research parks, and does nothing more, it will be home to nearly 3,500 jobs, according to a trade association's survey.

Clemson disclosed its initial corporate partners in the project during a groundbreaking ceremony last week.

The biggest announcement came from BMW Group, which said it will put a research center focused on information technology in the park, right next to Clemson's planned new graduate school of automotive engineering.

BMW didn't say how many employees it would house in the four-story, 80,000-square-foot research center during comments from the podium or in a press release announcing the project.

But during an interview, Bennie Vorster, the executive who will oversee the center, said BMW may eventually house up to 300 employees there. It will likely start with 40 to 50 employees, including some already working at its Greer plant, said Vorster, an information technologies vice president.

Executives with International Business Machines Corp. and Microsoft Corp. said their companies would join BMW in conducting research at the park, but they stopped short of making significant commitments of personnel.

"Over time, we're very interested in enhancing our own presence in the area, and it could be possible that a major commitment from IBM could be evaluated," said Todd M. Kirtley, general manager for the industrial sector of IBM Global Services. "But we're going to wait and see."

Greenville-based Michelin North America Inc. said it would also join in the effort, but hasn't yet defined its role.

Chris Przirembel, Clemson's vice president for research, predicted more company announcements in the days ahead.

"We've been in serious negotiations with a good number of global corporations," Przirembel said. "I envision over the next months and years we will periodically announce a new corporate partner that will join us on campus."

Clemson's long-term plans for the park include a full-scale wind tunnel that it would make available to motorsports teams as well as laboratories focusing on automotive electronics systems, safety/crash-worthiness, fuel economy and alternative fuels.

The new graduate school should have about 25 employees when it opens in the fall of 2005, said Tom Keinath, dean of the College of Engineering and Science at Clemson.

Over time, the campus work force should include not just highly paid engineers and scientists but also many technicians, secretaries and maintenance workers, he said.

"I think a lot of people are going to want to work at this place just because of the excitement of what they're doing," Keinath said.

He said that work at the Greenville campus will focus on systems integration, which integrates the mechanical and electrical systems of automobiles and is emerging as one of the biggest needs in the automotive industry.

Przirembel said that said that systems integration is especially important as the electrical and computer systems of cars become more complicated and all them to do more for their drivers.

Tom Barton, president of Greenville Technical College, said that "with research going on, with theoretical engineers at the top, you're going to have to have a tremendous number of support personnel."

Clemson president Jim Barker said that his school will collaborate with Greenville Tech to prepare the technical staff that will be needed as the campus develops. Barton said that according to general guidelines, every research engineer needs four to five technicians for support.

"That's pretty common across the country. And right now there's a huge shortage of technicians in this country — a huge shortage," Barton said.

The 20,000 jobs figure was put into circulation last year by Rosen Associates Development Inc., a Miami development company that Clemson originally picked to develop the park. Rosen Associates is still involved in the project, but will develop just 150 acres, instead of the entire 400, after a review of the park plans by Gov. Mark Sanford.

Tom Wells, Rosen Associates' director of developmental services, said his company, in calculating the 20,000 jobs number, figured the 400-acre park had room for nearly 4.5 million square feet of office, research and "flex" space. Assuming a certain number of employees for each type of space, Rosen Associates calculated a potential of 14,778 jobs on the campus itself, Wells said. Then it multiplied by 1.5 to account for spinoff jobs — the same "multiplier" that BMW assumed for its Greer plant, Well said — and came up with a total of 22,167 jobs created by the park, direct and spinoff.

"It was an educated guess," Wells said.

Rosen Associates used the figure in a pitch to the State Infrastructure Bank for $12 million to build roads in the park. Later, Clemson included the 20,000 jobs figure in an application for state lottery money to endow professorships at the graduate school, but the university is not standing by the number now.

Still, at least one expert wouldn't downplay the number.

"Parks can do those numbers, but it all depends on the tenant base," said Bill Dean, president of the Piedmont Triad Research Park in Winston-Salem, N.C. It's affiliated with the medical school at Wake Forest University and focusing on biomedical technology.

Dean, former president of the Association of University Research Parks (AURP), a 120-member trade association based in Reston, Va., cautioned that parks typically take years to realize their potential.

"This isn't going to be an overnight success story," he said. "People have to understand that."

A 2002 survey by the AURP found an average of 3,399 people employed at each of 79 research parks across the country. The typical park was home to 41 companies or organizations and had 1.3 million square feet of building space. Private enterprises occupied more than 80 percent of the space, the survey found.

Bill Drohan, AURP's executive director, said Clemson seems to be making the right moves.

"That really is the way to do it, where you get the land, you get a big corporate partner to come in, and you get it focused," Drohan said. "I think they're headed in the right direction. They have a focus and they have a marquee tenant."

A study of the University of Arizona's 8-year-old research park in Tucson found it responsible for more than 6,000 spinoff jobs in addition to nearly 6,000 jobs at the park itself. Total payroll exceeded $600 million in fiscal year 2000-2001, according to the study by the university's Office of Economic Development.

The average salary at the Tucson park was $57,500 that year, compared with $31,151 for the county where it resides.

But there are failures.

University of North Carolina business professor Michael Luger said in a 1991 study that half of all announced research parks failed. Of those that survived, half ended up changing their focus.

Even so, the most-successful research parks have transformed local economies. Luger said. Those include a Stanford University research park that sparked California's famed Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle Park in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, he said.

"So there are models out there," said Luger, director of UNC's Office of Economic Development. "But they're really the exception rather than the rule. Plenty of other places, they got a very nice development, but it's not clear it's helping the economy beyond what would have happened anyway."

Luger said a successful research park "takes patience. It takes lots of money. It takes careful planning and leadership. And with all those ingredients — and luck — it can be very significant."

— Staff writers Anna Simon and Ed O'Donoghue contributed to this report.