Corporate tenants fill Johns Hopkins University's Montgomery center;

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Feb 2, 2006 by KAREN BUCKELEW

The Johns Hopkins University's Montgomery County campus has signed yet another corporate tenant to its newest facility.The move comes on the eve of a major expansion of the campus.Rockville-based Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc., a three-year-old biotech, said this week it would relocate into 18,000 square feet of the campus's 115,000- square-foot Building III in the heart of the county's technology and life sciences community.The facility opened in 2000, part of the campus's mission to encourage networking and collaboration between corporations and academics interested in science and technology, said Elaine Amir, director of the Montgomery County campus.Hopkins leases 50,000 square feet of the building, and the remainder is leased to tenants like Vanda through the facility's developer, Spaulding & Slye, now part of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

Hopkins' portion of the facility features wet lab space for use by students, a bookstore and a cybercafe.In response to demand from prospective tenants, a fourth building for the same mixed-use purpose is planned within the next two years, and three more facilities are included in the campus's 10-year plan, Amir said. The expansion will take the campus from 315,000 square feet to 900,000 square feet of academic and research space.The hope, according to Amir, is that students, faculty and corporate scientists will mingle and share ideas.This is not just a set of buildings, we're creating a community, she explained. We like the interconnection, the collaboration. We're getting rid of that silo effect of people each operating in their own little domain. People can create things they never thought of before because of [sharing ideas with] someone else.The building to which Vanda will relocate already houses corporate and research tenants CBH Health, the National Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health, the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, and the Johns Hopkins Integrated Imaging Center.Now that Vanda is joining the tenant list, 18,000 square feet remain available.The current tenants have built collaborative relationships with Hopkins researchers already, and in some cases it was those relationships that brought them to the campus. The mental health federation, for example, already was working with researchers at Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, but wants to strengthen its relationship, said CEO Sandra Spencer.We thought this was a good way to network with Johns Hopkins, said Spencer, whose organization moved into its new space just last week. We thought it would be a good connection.The campus was born in 1985 when Montgomery County donated 36 acres to Hopkins to construct facilities to offer graduate-level courses for the executives and scientists employed at the tech and biotech companies springing up in the area.It now employs 450 faculty members, many of them adjunct, and educates 5,083 students, including a small number of undergrads.Vanda, which announced in December it would embark on an initial public offering as a way to raise $75 million, is gaining an additional 8,000 square feet of space in the move, according to Chief Business Officer William D. Chip Clark.The company examines the effects of drugs at the molecular level in hope of revitalizing drugs that have failed at their original purpose and in developing therapies of its own.The Montgomery County Department of Economic Development has been involved with Vanda since May 2004, and County Executive Douglas M. Duncan said the company's anchoring in the county illustrates the value of Hopkins' presence, according to a statement from his office.When we first worked with Johns Hopkins University to establish this Montgomery County campus, we envisioned the incredible opportunities - both in the educational and economic development arenas - this could provide, Duncan said. Today's announcement is a perfect example of how JHU's well-deserved reputation of excellence can attract more world class biotech companies to Montgomery County.