Albuquerque, New Mexico

Tenants of the Sante Fe Business Incubator have seen their one-story building increase from 10,000 sq. ft. to 30,000 sq. ft., according to a story by the Albuquerque Journal. The expansion is part of a $2.5 million project funded by the federal Economic Development Administration (EDA), the Regional Development Corporation and other agencies.

Tuesday’s primary resulted in the selection of gubernatorial candidates in nine states: Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. As of press time, Florida’s primary results on the Democratic side were still uncertain.

The new Arizona Technology Council (ATC) has announced its vision and mission as a non-profit association committed to growing member companies and the technology industry in Central and Northern Arizona.

Ray Gilley, president of Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission, has been appointed chairman of Workforce Florida.

Arizona was one of the first states to embrace cluster-based economic development in the early 1990s. While the formal clusters have had varying degrees of success since then, one of the challenges of a cluster-based approach to technology-based economic development is the fractionalized focus across sectors. Because of this, clusters can end up competing against each other for limited public resources, making cross-sector strategies difficult to identify or implement.

Senate Bill 1844, signed by Governor Jeb Bush this week, provides $30 million to create Centers of Excellence and includes several other key elements of the Florida Technology Development Initiative, proposed by Governor Bush in his State of the State speech this year.

Generating $48.7 million in tax revenues to local and state governments and 5,949 direct jobs, the 31 tenants of the University of Arizona Science & Technology Park had an estimated direct impact in excess of $1 billion in FY 2000-01, according to a new report from the university's Office of Economic Development.

The University of Florida is seeking a creative and versatile individual to assist in partnership development and commercialization of technologies for UF and its sponsoring agencies. The primary responsibility for this position will be to serve as Deputy Director for the Environmental Systems Commercial Space Technology Center (ES CSTC), a NASA sponsored environmental research center.

For the second year in a row, Florida cities dominate the Milken Institute's top 200 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in the ability to create and sustain jobs. The top performer, Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, moved up 31 places from last year and is followed by last year's top scorer, Cape Coral-Fort Myers, and Naples-Marco Island, respectively.

With a $310 million commitment passed by the state legislature and as much as $200 million in additional support from the county government, the California-based Scripps Research Institute has agreed to locate its first branch or satellite office in northwest Palm Beach County, Fla. In return for the financial support, Scripps is to work toward employing as many as 545 workers on the site by 2011.

Arizona Universities Partner to Create Joint Biomedical Campus

With state revenues posting a surplus, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush used his 2006-07 budget proposal to make his largest request yet to support efforts to diversify the state's economy through technology-based economic development (TBED). In total, the budget provides $630 million for several new research-focused initiatives, business recruitment funds, and other economic development programs.

The economic downturn and continuing state and local fiscal problems are not stopping most efforts to develop tech-based economies. Here are a few examples of recent groundbreakings from around the country.

Alternate financing schemes increasing to pay for popular TBED tool