Clean-tech focus sparks growth
Philadelphia Business Journal
January 15, 2010
Bristol, PA - partnership
between Ben Franklin
Technology Partners of
Southeastern Pennsylvania and
Keystone Redevelopment Group to spur alternative energy
companies is bringing
results.
Y-Carbon Inc., a Ben
Franklin-supported company
that uses nanotechnology to
make carbon materials that have energy, life-sciences and environmental applications,
plans to launch its manufacturing and development operations at Keystone’s Bridge
Business Center in Bristol next month.
Y-Carbon, which will maintain its
headquarters in King of Prussia, received $150,000 in federal stimulus funds this month
to help pay for the fit-out of its new space.
Federal stimulus dollars also have factored into Keystone’s overall redevelopment of the
Bridge Business Center, with $1 million in funds to help pay for a $2.6 million system
that uses natural gas and micro-turbines on the roof of one building to generate power
for, and heat and cool, the building.
Additionally, U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Bucks, secured nearly $800,000 in federal
funds for a Green Jobs Academy at the center. Its academic partners include Bucks
County Community College, Bucks County Technical High School, Delaware
Valley College and Drexel University. Corporate participants include Spanish windturbine
maker Gamesa Corporación Tecnológica, which will train workers for its plant in
nearby Fairless Hills.
The new developments have boosted Keystone’s efforts to turn a former Rohm and
Haas Co. research-and-development center into a vibrant center for cutting-edge
companies.
Keystone has attracted nine tenants since last January, when Bucks County Community College began teaching a chemistry class in Building B, which is the first building
Keystone is trying to fill.
Gregory Ventresca, a partner with Doylestown-based Keystone, said about 35 percent of
the building, which has 50,000 square feet, is rented. He thinks that could increase to
50 percent by the end of March and 75 percent to 80 percent by the end of June.
Keystone bought the center from Preferred Real Estate Investments in November 2006,
a year after Preferred bought it from Rohm and Haas. The firm spent $3.5 million
buying the center, which has 300,000 square feet of space in its four buildings on 30
acres, getting permits and improving the land and infrastructure, Ventresca said.
The center used to be a research-and-development center for Rohm and Haas, so two of
the buildings that Keystone bought have the infrastructure needed for laboratories.
Keystone, which also developed a warehouse into the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center
in Doylestown, knew that kind of infrastructure is expensive to put in and that there
were companies looking for buildings with it.
As a result, when Preferred showed it the Bridge Business Center, “that kind of made the
light bulb go off,” Ventresca said.
Like the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center, the Bridge Business Center is in the Bucks
County Keystone Innovation Zone, meaning companies that locate in it can get tax
breaks and other assistance from the state of Pennsylvania.
Keystone originally marketed the Bridge Business Center to life-sciences companies, and
still would be happy to have them as tenants, but last May it began working with Ben
Franklin on making the center a hub for alternative energy development.
Ben Franklin, a state-funded economic-development organization based in the
Philadelphia Navy Yard, is rolling out an initiative to make the area a leader in
alternative-energy and clean-technology development.
Over the past year, it has been looking for partners to help it, and thought that Keystone,
which it works with at the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center, would be a good match
because the Bridge Business Center is well equipped to house the types of young
technology companies it advises and funds.
Keystone was happy to work with Ben Franklin because it can offer young companies
expedited access to its services if they locate at the Bridge Business Center.
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