NOAA breaks ground as research park's first tenant

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claimed the first new position in the university's fledgling M Square research park yesterday when government and university officials dedicated the site near the College Park Metro Station.

The NOAA center - and other tenants such as NASA that will arrive in coming years - will create hundreds of new job and research opportunities for students, officials said. The park may also change the face of College Park and neighboring Riverside as students and scientists flood the area with traffic and demand for housing.

"The whole intent of this park is to bring in government and private sector facilities who want to be close to us for the assets we provide - like students," said university President Dan Mote in an interview.

He said the park spells a shift in the function of the university from providing isolated "Ivory Tower" instruction to helping students form early relationships with professionals in their fields and see their research incorporated into useful projects.

Administrators said the partnerships with federal agencies and private companies in the park offer faculty and students access to resources state funding cannot provide. Joint faculty appointments - in which the university and a research agency share a professor's research time and salary - will also save the university money, said Vice President for Administrative Affairs John Porcari.

"We couldn't possibly afford to do this on our own," he said. "The more we can grow our research program the more we can make up shortfalls in state funding and make tuition affordable."

The fully occupied park should net the university nearly $30 million in 15 years, said Vice President for Research Jacques Gansler.

The NOAA center will occupy more than six acres of the park's 130-acre plot, a barren expanse of packed dirt that fans out from the intersection of River Road and Paint Branch Parkway behind the Metro station. It will be fully built and occupied by February 2008 and will employ 800 scientists to track and predict global weather patterns for agricultural planning, the military and the public, in addition to conducting research on the effects of global warming and other environmental threats. Officials said the site's proximity to a Metro station and NOAA's headquarters in Silver Spring made this university's research park particularly attractive.

"With this prime location, NOAA will be able to draw upon the scientific expertise of one of the nation's finest research institutions and the university will be able to enhance its graduate and undergraduate research program," said U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D) at the groundbreaking.

The university continues to contact private companies and government agencies to fill the remaining park space, said Gansler, who declined to name specific candidates. The university solidified a research contract with Lockheed Martin last week, but the engineering firm showed little interest in opening a center in the university's park. NASA is the only other agency that currently plans to move in. The park space has already housed a Food and Drug Administration center for several years.

Once the park is completely developed, officials expect as many as 7,000 new cars to flood the area every day. The university has long been concerned about an overburdened Route 1, and officials said the research park creates an increased need for a solution.

Possibilities include encouraging workers to avoid Route 1 when driving to work, making one-day rental cars available, installing a light rail line from the Metro station throughout the city and increasing pressure on the city to build a road connecting the campus to the Capital Beltway - a project under consideration for the past 10 years.

Porcari said the university is considering erecting a condominium complex by the park to house students and researchers.

Contact reporter Kate Campbell at campbelldbk@gmail.com.