Boy, you want to talk about spin. I’m just not sure if the Journal is providing the spin or if they just bought it hook, line and sinker from the City of Winston-Salem.
Last night, the City Council authorized a $125,000 “grant” to Piedmont Triad Research Park to pay for the construction of labs for “a company that doesn’t have enough money to build its own lab and allow it to use the space for a certain period of time.” How nice of them.
But what blew me away about the Journal’s reporting is the way it was made to sound like such a “win-win” situation for everybody by raving about Targacept’s success:
The vote highlights how the city’s new biotechnology economy has begun feeding itself, as it marks the first time that a company in the research park will provide the money behind the city’s investment in a park project.
The economic feeding cycle started in 2001, when the city lent Targacept Inc. $500,000.
The city was taking a big bet on a small company, officials said. There was no way of telling what fortunes – good or bad – would follow the startup company or whether the company would be able to pay back the hefty loan.
Some of the city’s economic loans have faltered, but this one hasn’t.
Targacept now is a publicly traded company that has landed two drug-development deals worth a combined $65 million, not including the possible revenue the company could get if the research produces a pipeline of pharmaceutical drugs……
Each month, Targacept makes a payment of $9,435 to the city to pay back the $500,000 loan. Since payments have begun, the company has put $42,021 back in the city’s treasury; 48 payments remain.
Money coming from Targacept now will be used to finance the city’s $125,000 grant to the research park, said Derwick Paige, the deputy city manager.
So the city is turning around and giving away money it’s receiving as payment on its half-million dollar loan. That’s the city’s taxpayers’ money, not Targacept’s. I guess the idea is Targacept has been successful and at least has been able to pay the city back, which seems to be an unusual occurance. Three cheers for Targacept.
The real problem is the city will no doubt be asked to fork out more money to support the research park, considering the fact that it hasn’t exactly taken off as expected:
The park has a lot of empty land, and it hasn’t met its 10-year goal for jobs.
About 800 people work there, and 28 companies have set up that are not affiliated with Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which owns the research park. There are about six Wake Forest programs there, including the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
City officials estimate that the park will have 10,000 jobs by 2014.
