THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 3, 1995 TAG: 9507010332
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Ted Evanoff
TYPE: Opinion
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Ghent long has cultivated its genteel image. Once a sprawl of waterfront farms, it was turned into a pricey Norfolk suburb in the 1890s by a real estate developer. Even today, Ghent's old brick homes and leafy streets harbor a quiet urbanity.
At least that's the image. Fact is, the image obscures a powerful element in Hampton Roads' economy. What's located in Ghent is as vital to the region as Norfolk Navy Base or Virginia Beach's Oceanfront.
What's located there, of course, is Eastern Virginia Medical School. It's an economic engine. Its research scientists regularly invent technology that is sold and put into commercial production in cities throughout the United States.
But you have to ask, why doesn't the production occur in Tidewater? Why isn't EVMS being revved up to produce more jobs?
EVMS anchors a medical complex on the edge of Ghent along with Children's Hospital of the King's Daughter and Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. Together, they have grown dramatically in the last decade and now employ more than 6,000 people, including Gary D. Hodgen, a medical scientist at EVMS.
If you follow the news, you may have heard Hodgen's name. In case you haven't, consider the recent Hodgen profile written by Sharon Campbell in The Chronicle, an EVMS publication, under the headline ``200-million Dollar Man.''
It seems Hodgen, president of the medical school's Jones Institute For Reproductive Medicine, site of the nation's first successful test-tube baby, has landed more than $200 million in research money for EVMS since the mid '80s. Says the profile:
``In 1988, U.S. News & World Report included Hodgen among the nation's leaders in science and technology in an issue dedicated to `The American Establishment: Who Runs America?' He shared that distinction with William Gates, Microsoft founder; Stephen Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer; Robert Gallo, who discovered the AIDS virus; and about 30 others....
``Hodgen has developed licensing agreements with private companies that have netted EVMS nearly $24 million, with more to come. The agreements include a negotiated value for the intellectual property, the costs of pursuing patents, milestone payments for the years the company controls the technology... and, once the commercial product reaches the market, royalties as a percentage of sales.''
That's impressive, this $24 million in income; lamentable in its way, too. EVMS has sold technology invented in Ghent to private companies for commercial production. What's lamentable? Not one invention went into commercial production in Hampton Roads.
``What's happening now is the technology is being developed here and it's being exported,'' Hodgen said.
Big companies, including Johnson & Johnson, obtain the licenses from EVMS and set up high-tech shops where workers turn the inventions into products for the open market.
It's no accident the shops are chiefly found in certain cities. Once the word gets out the proper mix of technical services are available in a city, high-tech managers gravitate there. ``It's a herd mentality,'' Hodgen said.
The shops cluster around cities including Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Raleigh and San Jose. But not Norfolk, although if you listen to Hodgen, Tidewater sounds perfectly capable of biomedical production.
``If the area is good enough to make world-class discoveries in science, it's good enough to produce them,'' he said.
Tidewater can offer high-tech shops what cities like Austin have: access to research labs, a skilled and reliable workforce, a sophisticated lifestyle for the employees.
What the region lacks, Hodgen said, is the bedrock that supports high-tech shops - technical services such as toxic waste disposal, virus filter replacement. And the shops need a place to locate, a biomedical industrial park.
High-tech industrial parks have been discussed for years in Tidewater.
Norfolk officials almost built one in the late '80s. Even now they are exploring plans for a building that could house a biomedical company near the EVMS Diabetes Institute on Brambleton Avenue.
It would be a welcome addition to genteel Ghent. After all, had a biomedical park and the technical services been in place, Hodgen said, as many as 10 companies that acquired EVMS technology might have put plants in Tidewater. by CNB