2005-02-14 Regular Meeting and Public Hearing Meeting of the La Porte City Council minutes

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e .' . Itlzeo we're Where YOu Are ...,;';. ~ ;:",',-....- , State money seals deal Funds net big returns for business development By MARK EVANGELISTA' Citizen Staff If Phil Wilson was a private fund manager, his $181 million in investments would have returned a profit of over 300 per- cent. But as the deputy chief of staff for Gov., Rick Perry, he oversees econo.mie development and, the "deal-closing" capabili- ties of the Texas Enterprise Fund. Wilson told members of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership on Wednesday that the fund could be used to estab- li&h'acfBttonghold in the biotech- n610gy industry, just as it was used to secure a Toyota truck manufacturing plant in San Antonio. Of the six industry clusters identified in a study which includes biotechnology, all of them exist within Bay Area Houston, said BAHEP spokes- woman Tina Landingham. Wilson said that the emerging biotechnology industry centered aropnd UTMB has benefits for the whole region and the state. "What you've got in south- east Texas, through UTMB, UT- Health Science Center, M.D. Anderson, Lexicon" "and Cyberonics, manfacturing"drug testing - you've got a "huge patient pool," Wilson said that the potential goes beyond the state and up against the medical science jug- gernauts across the nation. "We can compete with the big centers like Boston, California, San Francisco, the Mayo Clinic," he said. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center creates opportunities' for research and expansion of biotechnology, said Wilson. "When people find out they have cancer, one of the first places they go is to M.D. Anderson," he said. "What we need to do is lever- age off that and make a smart strategic pltll1,th'at<:m~~~.r; grow the biotech industrY here,' andl~lieve we'have'achanceto do that in a lot of ways, reaIIyto become the Third Coast." B.efore the. funds, Cll9 be awarded, the governor, lieu- tenant governor and the speaker of the. house must unanimously agree to support the ulie of the fund for each specific project. Communitie.s like HO,uston and The Woodlands used the fund to get Citgo and Huntsman Chemicals respectively to relo- cate within its boundaries.