School President Harold Varmus (left) listens as Mayor Michael Bloomberg addresses the press in the Rockefeller Research Laboratories Board Room.

On August 11, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center played host to a press conference called by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to announce that Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a California real estate investment trust specializing in the development and management of laboratory space, has been selected to build the East River Science Park -- a privately financed, 870,000 square foot, $700 million complex of healthcare laboratories on the campus of Bellevue Hospital Center. "As robust as [New York's] biotech industry is, it's suffered from a lack of space for growth," the Mayor noted, speaking in the Rockefeller Research Laboratories Board Room. "Too often, the pattern has been for firms to begin labs at New York research institutions and then move out of town as they develop and expand. . . . Today, we are taking a major step toward reversing that trend."

"The existence of a vital biotech industry side-by-side with academic research is vital to progress that benefits patients in the long run," said Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center President Harold Varmus. "For those of us in the academic community, this is a day of great excitement. . . . We look forward to helping make the aspirations all of us have for biotech industry in New York a reality."

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