Mayo Clinic to Shift Focus to Research: Scottsdale Panel OKs Plan for Makeover

By Lindsay Butler, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

Jan. 12–The Scottsdale Mayo Clinic’s plans to reduce its patient services and adopt a lucrative high-tech research focus was approved Wednesday by the city’s planning commission.

The Mayo Clinic Collaborative Research Community wants to house several biotech and medical research companies over the next 20 years at its facility at 130th Street and Shea Boulevard, and gradually send much of its patient services to the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix.

The planning commission approved a request to rezone some of the Mayo Clinic’s 200 acres for a special campus and to update its master plan.

Mayo Clinic is working with Arizona State University and the Translational Genomics Research Institute, a nonprofit Phoenixbased bioscience group also known as T-Gen, and T-Gen’s sister companies, TD2 and the Cancer Drug Discovery Laboratory.

The college and companies will work independently toward the goal of making Mayo Clinic the premier academic medical center in the Southwest, said Bryan McSweeney, chairman of campus development at Mayo Clinic.

The project still is in the conceptual stage, but Scottsdale officials are expecting it to produce a significant boon to the city’s coffers.

“It will have a huge economic impact to this community in terms of types of jobs, the quality of jobs and the high-paid research focus positions,” said David Roderique, general manager of the Scottsdale economic vitality department.

“The prestige and image of the community will also be very important.” Marion Kelly, director of community relations at Mayo Clinic and a board member of the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce, said the project will have a “domino effect.”"It’s an attraction to other biotech and medical research kind of firms looking for a place to move to,” he said.

One of the research community’s buildings has already opened — a cancer research lab — and Roderique said he expects the project’s other major buildings to be opened about every two years on the campus.

Mayo Clinic’s proposal will go before the City Council on Feb. 7.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

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