WisBusiness: Research Park’s new urban campus hopes to draw high-tech firms

By Brian E. Clark
WisBusiness.com

MADISON – Most of the 115 businesses in the University Research Park on the Capital City’s west side are biotech companies that require wet labs for their ongoing experiments and product development.

But in the research’s park urban expansion in the former Marquip Building at 1245 E. Washington Ave., the targets for the 10 new incubator suites in the former manufacturing site will be high-tech entrepreneurs working in the areas of information technology, engineering, medical devices and computer sciences.

The effort is starting out small, with a lease of 6,000-square feet. But it has the potential to “explode” within a few years as faculty members and students start their own businesses, said UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley.

“There has been a ‘sea change’ of interest about entrepreneurship and starting businesses among students who want to create their own jobs instead of working for someone else,” said Wiley.

“I think there will be a great amount of demand for locations of student-originated companies,” added Wiley.

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said he first heard about the plan for the two-block-long, cream-colored building about a year ago during a lunch with Wiley.

Though the mayor said he has long wanted to improve the city’s east side, he still dropped his dessert fork.

“I said ‘what can we do to make this happen?'” he recalled. “This could be the spark that makes this corridor take off.”

Mark Bugher, who heads the University Research Park, said he hopes to have the 10 suites ready for occupation within 90 days.

“This is a modest, initial investment that we hope to expand,” he said. “It will be a world-class, yet affordible, facility that will target IT, engineering, medical device and consulting start-ups that aren’t in our current park.”

Bugher noted the proximity to the UW-Madison and Madison Area Technical College downtown campuses and said the East Washington area has an “edgy” feel popular with young entrepreneurs.

“Those are exactly of business people we hope to capture here,” added Bugher, who said he did not know what it would cost to renovate the incubator suites for their new occupants.