http://66.225.205.104/LM20090626.mp3
A major tenant has left the North Carolina Research Campus because it says development has been too slow and the campus hasn't attracted enough companies. WFAE's Lisa Miller has more: PPD is a leading pharmaceutical research firm based in Wilmington. When the company announced in April of last year that it was expanding to Kannapolis, developers called it a coup. They hoped PPD would lure a major drug maker to the site. And then there was the promise of up to 300 jobs. At the announcement, PPD's CEO Fred Eshelman said expanding to Kannapolis made sense for the company. "All the ingredients from discovery through drug development are in one place at the same time, a lot of bright people and so we're really excited," said Eshelman. But Eshelman changed his mind. PPD now says the company is terminating its lease because the campus has been too slow in developing and finding tenants to fill the site. A spokeswoman for the research campus says economic conditions have made it hard to recruit companies. Economist Joe Cortright says most biotech companies are small, financially-strapped operations that are hit especially hard in a rough economy. "It's an industry that depends very heavily on investments of capital from financial markets. And everybody knows how turbulent things have been in financial markets for the past nine months," explains Cortright. But Cortright says growing a biotech hub is extremely difficult even in good economic times. PPD has not said whether it plans to expand somewhere else, but the company says it would still like to work with the campus in some way.