Community Corner

Helix Center Opens Creve Coeur Doors

The St. Louis County Economic Council-backed facility will be able to offer budding biotech businesses affordable lab space and access to mentoring and capital.

The , , BRDG Park and others have been slowly picking up steam in efforts to help market the Olive Boulevard-Warson Road area as a hub of biotechnology.

Consider the mission joined by a new player which opened its doors to the public Monday afternoon: The Helix Center, a high tech business incubator housing 33 thousand square feet of office and lab space, located at 1100 Corporate Square.

The building is the latest incubator launched by the St. Louis County Economic Council.

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The theme of the day was of innovation supported by collaboration, given the facility's location near the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and the Bio- Research Development Growth or BRDG Park. 

In a perfect world, a nascent idea will be developed into a business at the Helix Center before maturing into a larger office/lab footprint at the BRDG Park. A bridge to the BRDG, if you will.

Find out what's happening in Creve Coeurwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

A business at the Helix Center will find affordable lab space, mentoring and access to capital, according to Elizabeth Noonan, Vice President, Bioscience & Technology, Business Development Division, St. Louis County Economic Council.

"Our goal is not to be completely full, its to have space for people to grow," she told Patch. There are no tenants currently signed up for space yet and without assigning a timeline to it, Noonan said she'd expect some in the next couple months.

"Will it have an impact today, in the next few years? No," said Sam Fiorello, Chief Operating Officer, Danforth Plant Science Center, President, BRDG Park at the Danforth Plant Science Center. "But I think in year 3-4-5 you'll start to see the deal-flow come out and the ones that are successful will be incubated out and they'll come to the BRDG Park and it'll add the ecosystem that we're talking about.


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