By Eric Jay Toll for the PHXNewsroom
The reason is the 30-acre Downtown bioresearch and discovery campus located between Fifth and Seventh streets in the city’s core. Bustling from a more than $600 million investment by the City of Phoenix and its partners, the campus is the core of a bio and life science ecosystem that rolls outward across the city and throughout Greater Phoenix.
Recognizing its role at the center of driving translational discovery, Phoenix is rebranding the campus as the Phoenix Bioscience Core. The core partnership involves various major bioscience research organizations, including the Arizona Board of Regents, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, University of Arizona, Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Dignity Health and others.
“Our bioscience landscape has expanded exponentially from the campus approach we first imagined for downtown,” said Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego. “Phoenix is now a center for treatments discovered and cures delivered. We lead the nation in bioscience job growth, and are recognized among the top five emerging life science markets. It is the right time to update our image to mirror this growth in medical technology, life sciences and medical devices.”
Located on the edge of the Roosevelt Row Arts District and within the heart of the Evans Churchill neighborhood, the Phoenix Bioscience Core physical boundaries fall between Monroe and Garfield streets, and from Fourth to Seventh streets. With more than 20 institutes of research excellence located on or within a 2-mile radius of the PBC, bioscience companies have unprecedented collaboration partnership opportunities to accelerate novel innovations.
“When the Flinn Foundation proposed that Phoenix follow the Arizona Bioscience Roadmap in 2002, few saw it as anything more than a dream,” said the Mayor. “Today, we’re seeing the destination at the end of that journey with our Downtown campus at its core.”
Over the past two years, brokerage CBRE placed Phoenix in the top ranks of its life sciences scorecard. This year, the report showed Phoenix with the fastest-growing increase in life science jobs, more than any bio legacy market. Only Boston has more new bioscience facilities under development than Phoenix.
The branding refresh doesn’t change the classic stylized Phoenix and globe depicting the core’s connection to the world of science from Phoenix; the new name will begin appearing around the Downtown campus and in marketing materials at the Bio International Conference in San Diego this summer.