Anthony Westbury: VGTI will be a tough sell for Port St. Lucie

Is it a bold step toward a new future, or is the city of Port St. Lucie clinging to the past in rebranding the defunct Vaccine Gene Therapy Institute building in Tradition?

In case you missed it: The city announced Friday it's taking over the empty VGTI lab building, rebranding it as "the Florida Center for Bio-Sciences," and on Monday agreed to hire a new real estate firm to market the place.

The appraised price of the lab is $11 million; rumor has it Port St. Lucie officials think it may fetch more. Whatever happens, it'll be a drop in the ocean of debt the city's carrying on VGTI. It held the mortgage for $64 million and has laid out at least another $3.5 million on maintenance since the owners left town in October 2016.. 

Yet the city's latest action will save taxpayers some money — about $420,000 a year in management costs previously paid to the court-appointed receiver. That's the good news and I'm glad to see the city do it.

Yet that rebranding/bio-sciences thing seems, oh, so 2003.

That was when then-Gov. Jeb Bush poured more than $1billion  into creating bio-science clusters across Florida. The money was intended to shake up the state's traditional reliance on agriculture, tourism and citrus. Bush wanted a few thousand new high-paying jobs in the bargain.

Yet after a brief period of success — when Port St. Lucie snagged the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies and VGTI, and Palm Beach County grabbed Scripps Florida — the Bush effort seems to have foundered, and those premium jobs arrived only in tiny numbers.

While Scripps Florida in Jupiter seems fairly stable, the Sanford Burnham Medical City at Lake Nona in Orlando is in big trouble.

That cluster did amass several University of Central Florida facilities, including the college of medicine; Nemours Children's Hospital; University of Florida research facilities; Valencia College; and the Orlando Veterans Administration Medical Center. Yet Sanford Burnham Prebys, a California-based life-sciences research organization, is on the verge of leaving the Sunshine State altogether.

According to Sanford Burnham CEO Perry Nisen last summer, "We do not have the critical mass of scientists or funding to sustain the Lake Nona site as an independent research facility long term."

In January 2017, Sanford Burnham Institute faculty members were openly discussing leaving the complex, and in May last year Sanford Burnham began talks with Florida Hospital to take over its research center.

Other critics have pointed to the lack of venture capitalist money in Florida as an important disincentive.

What does that say for Port St. Lucie?

The city's new real estate broker, Avison-Young-Florida LLC,  operates almost 80 offices worldwide. It has had some bio-science success in the past, but isn't the national tide moving away from funding scientific research?

President Donald Trump's proposed 2017-18 budget — which is sure to be picked apart in Congress — is not a hopeful bellwether.

In April, Trump proposed cutting biomedical research by 18 percent. Cuts at the National Institutes of Health could reduce that agency's spending level from $31.7 billion to $25.9 billion for the coming year.

The NIH distributes most of those funds to scientists around the country who are investigating cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, AIDS and other illnesses. Those were areas VGTI was shifting toward, too.

Port St. Lucie was put in a deep financial hole more than a decade ago and I commend officials for trying to make a little lemonade out of some huge lemons now. Yet I fear they're armed with only a teaspoon to dig their way out of that hole.  

Mayor Greg Oravec prefers to look at the Florida Bio-Sciences center as an opportunity, not a drawback. "No one wants to be left holding the bag, but it can be a strategic asset," he said. "We can turn a weakness into a strength if we can use the lab to bring jobs and better prospects to the Treasure Coast."

City manager Russ Blackburn also accentuated the positive.

"This is a fairly unique building in Florida and even nationally," Blackburn argued, saying the lab has sophisticated safety features to isolate dangerous biological agents. "We have Class A space that's ready to move into. We'll ask our new brokers to focus on companies and universities that need a turnkey building. If you need space now, we've got it. They could open the doors almost immediately."

On Monday evening at the City Council meeting, the choice for a new marketer of the Tradition lab was decided within 30 seconds without any comments from the dais. I wish we'd had a discussion on something that's cost the city so much money.

Blackburn added that because of an existing federal grant, the building must have an economic development end user. So we won't be selling it to a tax-exempt church, as happened with the former Digital Domain building.

For all that enthusiasm, though, it seems we're still operating on a wing and a prayer.

Anthony Westbury is a columnist for TCPalm. This column reflects his opinion. Contact him at 772-221-4220, anthony.westbury@tcpalm.com, or follow him @TCPalmWestbury on Twitter.