Irvine Co. to Build Facility Next to UCI to Foster High Tech

Irvine Co. plans to build a $10-million “innovation center” next to the UC Irvine campus to provide technical assistance for fledgling high-tech companies and to encourage better interaction between the university and private enterprise.

Richard G. Sim, president of Irvine Co.’s office and industrial subsidiary, said Tuesday that the 100,000-square-foot facility will be a key segment of a research park being developed by the university and the Newport Beach-based real estate development firm.

The 265-acre research park will also contain the Western headquarters of National Academy of Sciences and Irvine Co.’s executive hotel-conference center, as well as office sites for technologically oriented corporations, he added. Construction of the seven-acre innovation center is expected to start early next year, with the opening scheduled for early 1988.

Sim said tenants chosen for the center will reflect a wide range of technological fields that could benefit from proximity to the university. In turn, he added, the university may provide professors to serve as consultants and graduate students to work in laboratories.

Guidelines for admission to the center will be set by an advisory committee, Sim said. Representatives of the university, National Academy of Sciences, Irvine Co., the city and perhaps a respected scientist will be invited to serve on the committee, he added.

Low Rent for Best Ideas

Sim said the start-up companies “with the best, cutting-edge ideas” that are selected will be be able to rent space in the center at below-market rates for two to three years, after which they will be required to move out of the center to make way for newcomers. A full-time director at the center will give business advice to the tenant firms.

Irvine Co.’s hope is that firms that get their first helping hand at the center will stay in Irvine as they expand.

“We regard it (the innovation center) as an important tool to help us keep high technology in Irvine,” Sim said. University and Irvine Co. planners speculate that the innovation center may help channel some commercially promising ideas out of university laboratories and into new products. In some instances, they said, students or professors may become the founders of new firms.

UCI Chancellor Jack W. Peltason said Tuesday that he believes most of the exchanges between companies at the research park and university faculty will be informal, occurring at lunches and seminars.

Two Staffs to Rub Elbows

“I think our scientists will learn from their engineers and their engineers will learn from our scientists,” he said.

“Our primary purpose is teaching and research, and it will remain that. We are not getting into business,” Peltason added.

However, he noted that universities and industrial firms throughout the country are finding it mutually beneficial to have a closer relationship.

“I think the universities are today more and more the sources out of which the economy will be generated in the future,” Peltason said.

To UCI’s advantage, he noted, the research park that Irvine Co. plans to build on 65 acres owned by Irvine Co. and an adjoining 200 acres owned by the university will create the kind of an environment “that will help us recruit scholars.”

University Space Reserved

In addition, the Irvine Co. has agreed to reserve a “significant amount” of space in the innovation center for university use, said Bill Parker, associate executive vice chancellor. He said provision of space for university purposes was necessary for the center to conform with current zoning on the property.

Larry Hogle, Irvine director of community development, said the Irvine Co. has informed the city that the amount of space in the center that will be used by the university will be “in excess of 50%.”

Parker added that the university, which is short of laboratory space, will use the center to launch new programs, including biochemical engineering, and to expand existing programs in engineering and computer science.