Leaders tout future phases of KU Innovation Park

KEY QUOTE: “As I’ve dug into the numbers, I’ve seen the importance of this innovation campus,” Gov. Laura Kelly told the crowd, which also included U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, and multiple leaders of the Kansas Legislature. “It enables our state to not just keep up with economic trends, but to set them ourselves.”

KU opens new research and office building in latest effort to attract tech companies to West Campus

-- A $24 million research and office building will house nearly a dozen tech companies and eventually add about 225 employees to the University of Kansas’ West Campus, a Lawrence crowd was told Wednesday.

-- The new 66,000-square-foot building — the third phase of KU Innovation Park, which is on a portion of West Campus north and west of 23rd and Iowa streets — is known as a “graduation facility.” It is designed to take companies that are outgrowing their space in the business incubator building of KU Innovation Park and move them into larger space with more extensive laboratories.

-- KU Innovation Park executives are estimating, all told, that the new building will allow Innovation Park to house about 425 employees in the three buildings that now exist in the park. That’s an increase of about 225 employees over what was possible before the new facility.

-- “We know there may be an opportunity for Panasonic to bring some of their research and development here in the years ahead,” KU Chancellor Douglas Girod said. “That could be a huge opportunity.”