Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett said Tuesday the suburb is wasting its competitive advantage in attracting major biotech investors to the area, outlining a new blueprint to lure cutting-edge medical research companies in an effort to expand a stagnant tax base. The county has an established biotech pedigree, with a small army of federal scientists and some high-profile federal agencies — including the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration — in its backyard.
But according to a new report commissioned by Leggett, the county is also lagging jurisdictions making similar pushes in an industry still largely in its adolescent stages.
“We could have done better,” Leggett told the County Council on Tuesday. “We’ve had starts; we’ve had some investments in this area; we did not take full advantage of assets we had in the past. If we are to take that next step, we need to come up with a new model, a different approach.”
At the core of his proposal, Leggett wantsto facilitate greater public-private partnership for biotech projects at a time when the county has scarce dollars to devote to speculative investment. He also would like to develop support programs to train bioscience entrepreneurs and a global marketing strategy to better commercialize research.
Critics said the plan leaves much to be desired.
“I thought it was a little generic,” said former Councilman Mike Knapp, who now works in the biotech field. “I didn’t think that the model recognized the characteristics of the county. We need to focus on how to actually create new companies. There wasn’t much of that there.”
In fact, the county has been unable to deliver on promises that were intended to turn lab experiments into a dependable revenue source. County officials were forced to shelve approved tax breaks for biotech companies because of runaway deficits — which have shown no signs of slowing.
“It doesn’t look good when we offer a promise to industry and don’t follow through,” said Councilman George Leventhal, D-at large.
Leggett’s push comes as Montgomery has lost out on a handful of major corporate relocations to Fairfax County and while Prince George’s County looks to make historically high investment in development projects.
The effort is hardly guaranteed to pump dollars into depleted county coffers. Historically, most biotechs have been unable to translate their research into commercially viable products.
And the county executive confused others with the timing of the initiative.
“I’m trying to understand why the county — if we haven’t been able to do it from a Department of Economic Development perspective — why the county feels there will be some new engagement that will work,” said Councilman Craig Rice, D-Germantown.
