OSU-Cascades Innovation District – an economic boon to Central Oregon
The first on-campus university innovation district in Oregon will create a vibrant community where students, faculty and businesses can share ideas and research
Oregon State University-Cascades (OSU-Cascades) is ready to launch its new innovation district – a public/private development that will be a game-changer for Bend and Central Oregon. The district will create a dynamic development for research, activities, housing and public space that will serve students, businesses and the community.
The district is designed for 500,000 square feet of technically wired, mixed-use office, retail and housing, as well as outdoor gathering and event space. It will support opportunities to invent and bring research, ideas, and products to market in bioscience, biotech, sports performance, health, outdoor products, energy engineering, applied and software engineering, sustainable tourism, the arts, and natural resources – all areas of curriculum at OSU-Cascades. It will also be an opportunity for students to work with businesses, applying classroom theories to real world problems.
Innovation districts provide the opportunity to leverage public assets like land, infrastructure, and education, with private enterprises and funding. They are tools to transform under-utilized land into economic and research centers accessible to the community. Locating an innovation district on a college campus has the added benefit of linking the research to students and the future workforce.
Planned for development on 8 acres in the northeast corner of the OSU-Cascades campus, the project is slated to be the first on-campus university innovation district in Oregon. It will create a vibrant community where students, faculty and businesses not only share ideas and research, but can also enjoy food, activities and housing. But to bring it to its fullest potential OSU-Cascades needs input, support and partners from within the region’s leadership and business community.
OSU-Cascades is actively scouting for private businesses and funding to be paired with the university’s public investment of ready-to-develop land. There are multiple reasons to be excited about this. One is that students will benefit from a learning experience that will make them more ready to hit the workforce running. According to the State of Oregon, we entered this decade with a declared need of 300,000 additional postsecondary credentials to prepare adult workers for a future of increasingly complex work. The innovation district will leverage the university’s student body and research with industries thatare looking to fill that growing labor gap.
University innovation districts also provide significant benefit to private sector companies looking for advances, growth and collaborative research. These districts create unique synergies from being located at a university with access to researchers, faculty experts and student interns. This is where the capacity to accelerate ideas happens in a way that a university or company cannot achieve alone.
And building on the university’s service to our region’s diverse communities is also a benefit. The Brookings Institute recently wrote that innovation districts can play a critical role in inclusivity and bridging economic and social divides. OSU-Cascades already serves a previously underserved Central Oregon population, with about a third of their students being Pell Grant eligible. The new innovation district will increase accessibility to jobs, housing and a vibrant campus that creates opportunities for OSU-Cascades’ wide variety of students. Add to that the advantage of developing the district into a space that will be accessible to the whole community.
The Brookings Institute has also shown that innovation districts are “the very link between economy shaping, place making and social networking”. These collaborative spaces are how businesses and entrepreneurs are starting and growing their companies. There are plenty of examples of districts around the country that we can learn from. One well-known example is Research Triangle Park at Duke University. It started from humble roots and now boasts more than 55,000 employees and 300 companies.
Innovation districts also reimagine and vitalize the economy. They can grow jobs that align with Central Oregon’s growing diversity of industries, empower entrepreneurs, expand transit and accessibility and raise revenues to further expand the campus and grow new companies.
OSU-Cascades’ innovation district will include more than co-located labs. It will be a place of collaboration and invention. It will also be a place for the community to interact with the campus. And it will be brought about by bringing public and private investment to land that will be transformed from a former quarry and landfill to a new, vital and important place to learn, invent, connect and live.
Katy Brooks is chief executive officer of the Bend Chamber of Commerce
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