Editorial: Science and Technology Park has a bright future

The headline "costly disappointment" has hung over the 2-million-square-foot facility on Tucson's far east side since its inception. And truly, the publicity surrounding the facility, from a busted Microsoft lease that cost taxpayers several million dollars to the ignoble beginnings of the former Arizona International Campus, has painted a 340-acre kick me sign on the park. More recently, the UA research park, the nation's ninth largest, and its fraternal twin at Arizona State University, have suffered from state scrutiny including a negatively interpreted performance review by the state auditor general and seemingly annual debate in the state legislature.

That debate during the past several legislative sessions has been driven, for the most part, by Rep. Jean McGrath, R-Glendale, a Republican who sits on the House of Representatives' Appropriations committee and chairs the Public Institutions and Universities committee. This year's proposal, HB2389, would demand that the Arizona Board of Regents divest from their involvement in the research parks over the next 25 years.

The measure, McGrath told the Arizona Daily Wildcat, will bail the regents and the university out of a "silly" investment.

"I find it ridiculous that the university feels they have the expertise to do this," McGrath said. "I'd like to get them out of a bad investment."

But debate over the UA's investment, including the $3.4 million price paid for the former IBM facility on Rita Road, is not one about good or bad business practices, but rather a question of ideology.

University officials argue the facility, which is scheduled to be financially self-sufficient by the year 2001, is not simply an issue of revenue. Instead, the park stands first and foremost as a UA attempt to reach out to cutting edge businesses both well known and less known with a facility that serves the needs of high tech companies: clean rooms and laboratories, for example. The goal of the science and technology park, which offers tenant businesses a substantial tax break, is "enhanc(ing) Tucson's position of leadership as a high-tech community of choice," according to the park's website.

To that end there is valid economic argument in favor of the UA park, if not the ASU park, that belies McGrath's argument that the universities "don't have a clue as to what they're getting into." It would also appear that McGrath's argument that the tech parks compete with private business to the detriment of those businesses. After all, such rabid pro-development groups as the Greater Tucson Economic Council have been in support of the park from the beginning.

In the end, the technology park will continue to stir ideological debates on the role of the state and the role of universities in the economy of Arizona. That debate includes the health of small local business and larger national corporations and to what extent the University of Arizona will do business with the private sector. These arguments will continue as the university moves toward a stronger relationship with private business and they are healthy.

To that end, the UA Science and Technology Park appears ready, for the time being, to put its checkered public relations past behind it and become a real contributor to the economic future of the university, the city and state.