Incentives Attract San Diego Company
Posted on: Tuesday, 16 August 2005, 00:00 CDT
Aug. 16--A small life-sciences company in San Diego has struck a deal with Missouri officials to relocate to the St. Louis area, its chairman said Monday.
Sequoia Sciences would receive an estimated $600,000 in local tax breaks to build a $6.5 million headquarters in Webster Groves, under a plan that will be discussed at tonight's city council meeting.
In addition to the tax incentives, Sequoia also is making the move because of its ties to Washington University and the Missouri Botanical Garden, said Steve Trampe, the company's chairman and a developer in the St. Louis area.
Doug Rasmussen, an assistant vice president of the St. Louis County Economic Council, called the deal "a real feather in our cap in terms of bringing in a new biotechnology-type company."
"It's a company that was in San Diego and is now looking to St. Louis. That's a nice story to tell about our biotech efforts," Rasmussen said.
Sequoia has about a dozen employees. The company expects to soon begin testing the results of its drug research in clinical trials.
Once before, in 2000, Sequoia announced plans to move to the St. Louis area, where it would be close to Trampe and other investors.
But the company later reconsidered when funding in Missouri for incentives dried up a bit, Trampe said. At the time, it also made more sense to be close to its mostly California-based customers.
A recent change in business focus, however, has made St. Louis a more strategic location, he said.
Tonight, St. Louis County officials will ask the Webster Groves City Council for the green light to begin the legal process of offering Sequoia the incentives. The tax breaks were negotiated between the company and county.
Sequoia would construct a new office and lab at Webster's Owen Ridge business park under the current plan, Rasmussen said. "We think that it can be a West-Coast-in-Webster kind of feel," he said.
Trampe said he also expects to nab some incentives from Missouri.
Sequoia's original business plan was to maintain a library of chemicals and data on those chemicals and sell access to it to pharmaceutical and other companies. Today, Sequoia has shifted in the direction of drug discovery, Trampe said.
"We've discovered some pretty important compounds ourselves, and we'd like to put them to trial," Trampe said.
Sequoia has a verbal agreement to temporarily occupy office and lab space at a separate location in the St. Louis area, Trampe said, but he declined to be more specific.
Sequoia would receive the $600,000 in property-tax breaks over a 10-year period under the incentives plan. That would basically cut the company's local property taxes in half. The plan still needs to clear several hurdles, including County Council approval.
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Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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