By Nick Todaro, Reporter

Research Campus, Louisiana Tech’s planned $25 million research park, is being designed by the same architect working on the expansion to the Lincoln Parish Library.

Ruston’s Mike Walpole will lead up design work on the Tech project, and will have Sasaki Associates of Boston on board as a consultant, said Les Guice, vice president of research and development at Tech.

“Sasaki is considered one of the leading planners for research parks in the country,” Guice said. “We believe that we have the ideal team in place, one that can bring us the research park best practices from across the nation while considering some of the excellent local development and planning efforts that have been done around the university and in the community.”


With land chosen, but not yet revealed to the public because of concerns of throwing kinks in the works of land acquisition, the university has moved closer to realizing the project, which began with university leaders bulldogging in the Louisiana Legislature for funding.
Half came in the 2007 Legislative session, in the form of $12 million in appropriations.

The other half came from a line of credit from the state bond commission last fall.
The first building, which Guice said is planned to have 50,000 square feet of space at a cost of about $10 million, will be going up hopefully by 2009 and is intended to serve as a launch pad or home for between three and five companies.

“That will include companies that have graduated from our incubators or those that want to locate near Tech to capitalize on our intellectual capital and research facilities,” Guice said. “One of our current incubator companies … has a critical need for a 24/7 production, operation and broadcast center to support their … business.”

The plans for the building include a home for that company, he said.
“We need for the building to be highly functional and attractive for the types of high-growth companies that we want in our park.”

That means stepping up to the plate with adequate funds, Guice said.
“These companies expect amenities similar to those that they would find in Austin (Texas) or other high-tech centers across the country,” he said.

Plans are in the works to provide convenient access to automated teller machines, mail services, cleaning, communication systems, computing capability and reliable power and security, among other details.

The project is also being addressed with a master plan, Guice said, with planning being led by a team from Hunt, Guillot and Associates of Ruston and including architects Tipton/Ashe of Baton Rouge and Alexandria. That work is being funded through a $250,000 grant from the Economic Development Administration that was nailed down through the efforts of Tech Enterprise Center director Davy Norris, Guice said.

University President Dan Reneau has cited the university’s strength in innovation — its patent agreements and licensing agreements have grown quickly as research has developed into a university focus — as reasons the research park must be realized.
By the end of 2006, the university was averaging 32 inventions per year and filed for 17 patents during the year. Those numbers grew again in 2007.

The growth has been noticed. Tech was ranked 10th by Small Times magazine in commercialization of technology this year and 3rd in microtechnology and nanotechnology education in 2006. Tech’s Yuri Lvov, a professor in the Institute for Micromanufacturing, also received a Small Times honor in the fall, with the announcement of his selection as Innovator of the Year.