The University of Missouri St. Louis (UMSL) has purchased a $2.7 million, 56,000-square-foot laboratory facility and will renovate it for use as a new tech incubator and supercomputing center.

The building, across the highway from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, had been renovated for use as a lab by Incyte Genomics, a Wilmington, Delaware-based pharmaceutical company. The facility comes equipped with a 3,000-square-foot central computing chamber and peripheral office/lab spaces. These niche improvements were attractive to UMSL for their IT Enterprises, a new business incubator set to open at the end of 2007.

UMSL plans to invest several million dollars in IT Enterprises, which will house a supercomputer and up to 12 startup companies. UMSL hopes the supercomputer will attract researchers and financial grants, which in turn will vitalize the business incubator. The building would have required significant interior renovation had it been sold to a traditional office user.

Source: Midwest Real Estate News