Expectations running high as MaRS Discovery District reaches operational status

Phase I opens officially in the fall

Now the hard part begins. After five years, nearly $200 million in public and private financing and countless volunteer hours by a group of committed individuals, Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District is set to open. There are lofty expectations for the highly touted public-private partnership to play a key role in building and growing globally competitive technology companies in Ontario by marshalling existing resources in the province and beyond.

Located in the heart of Toronto’s formidable research and financial districts, the first tenants are now moving into the 700,000 sq-ft initial phase – a complex of three buildings including one where Charles Best and Frederick Banting conducted the clinical trials for insulin in the early 1920s. The Toronto region is rich in a host of research disciplines that are considered crucial to Canada’s future well being if only they can be made to work synergistically.

“To move the economic needle — that’s the goal — we have to improve Toronto’s output. To compete globally, we have to roll all our assets and leverage as effectively as we can across the province,” says Dr Ilsa Treurnicht, MaRS’s first fulltime CEO, adding that the official name for MaRS — medical and related sciences — fails to capture the true nature of the organization’s scope and objectives. “The main boundaries of science are not as tidy anymore so the convergence strategy is key. If we want to compete globally, we have to bring in our strength in ICT (information and communications technologies) and material science. That’s what I see as one of the competitive advantages for the province of Ontario.”

The phase I buildings house a variety of facilities that comprise MaRS’s two core business units — real estate and business services. Treurnicht says the real estate component is critical to achieving the organization’s multi-faceted program objectives and the overarching goal of commercializing research.

“We have a real estate business and we have to do that very well because it generates cash to fund our programs, which is our other business,” says Treurnicht. “They range across the domains of science, business and capital, particularly driving convergence between them. Within these domains we have specific program strategies to energize those communities. MaRS is not trying to tell scientists how to do their science but to create new conversations between scientists and look at where markets are emerging for some of these really new fields of science, and to focus on capacity building in the emerging areas.”

Treurnicht joined MaRS last December after serving as president and CEO of Primaxis Technology Ventures Inc, one of several early stage venture capital funds established in the late 1990s by RBC Technology Ventures Inc. She replaces Ken Knox, who served part-time as CEO in addition to his responsibilities with the Innovation Institute of Ontario.

Treurnicht will work alongside president and COO John Cook, who has devoted much of his time towards establishing partnerships with research and economic development organizations throughout the province. Truernicht’s responsibilities lean toward company building through the development of program strategies and the MaRS entrepreneurship centres in Toronto and other connected regions.

Fundraising continues to be an ongoing challenge, despite the success in securing money from all three levels of government. The latest investment was by the Ontario government in its latest Budget, devoting $6.5 million over three years to assist in marketing and branding. In the works are additional public investments, private capital and “significant donations” which should be announced in the coming weeks. Treurnicht estimates that another $200 million must be raised to finance the even larger phase II portion of the facility, slated for completion in 2008. Planned for the second phase is a hotel featuring suites designed for extended stays by post-doctoral researchers and families of people visiting nearby hospitals. Like the incubation and entrepreneurship centres of phase I, the hotel — along with anchor tenants — will generate cash flow that will be plowed into MaRS programs.

“We have to be very focused and execute flawlessly because compared to the competition, we’re underfunded in the classic Canadian tradition,” she says, pointing to the $4 billion invested in Singapore’s Biopolis, a two million sq-ft complex completed last year. “We have the advantage of building on top of a very powerful position of research and innovation but we’ve got to get commercial output … To stay competitive we have to perform, we have to leverage the investment or we don’t have a hope of paying for health care or paying for any of the other things we love as Canadians.”

For the Ontario government, MaRS provides a potentially powerful conduit for the realization of its emerging commercialization strategy. In its last Budget, Ontario announced a network of regional innovation centres comprised of 11 existing centres currently focused on the life sciences (R$, May 18/05). MaRS is a key component of the new network, offering provincial researchers a window outside the province and Canada as well as delivering its programs beyond Toronto.

MaRS is also establishing strong connections with the Ottawa region, the next largest concentration of research expertise in the province. Treurnicht says the relative cohesiveness of the Ottawa S&T community can benefit MaRS, particularly through collaboration with the Ottawa Life Sciences Council (one of the 11 regional innovation centres) and the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI). In addition to its real estate and business units, MaRS is also weighing the possibility of establishing a unit devoted to capital. Such a unit would be valuable in collaborating with venture capital companies, several of which have already established a presence in MaRS.

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