An old-fashioned brass bell mounted high on a wall in the sleek hallway at the high-tech bioscience incubator VelocityTX is there for celebrating download lagu accomplishments and milestones.
Randy Harig took hold of the bell pull in April and gave it a good ring when the Texas Research and Technology Foundation closed on its purchase of the historic G.J. Sutton property.
As CEO of the foundation, which owns and operates the nonprofit’s growing subsidiaries in a former cold storage plant on San Antonio’s East Side, Harig saw the acquisition as a major victory in expanding its footprint for the good of the community.
But the Sutton property is one on a long list of recent gains for the foundation since its leaders began shifting from operators of a suburban research park into building a modern-day, urban innovation district.
In the last two years, the foundation that’s based on economic development principles also opened VelocityTX with two anchor tenants, graduated several startups, brought the investing network into its fold and established a subsidiary that buys legacy businesses. It also sold off much of its land on the far West Side.
On May 18, the nonprofit will lay out its next steps and ask city leaders, philanthropists and others for financial support as they work to expand economic opportunity around research and development in the bioscience sector.
“We have one shareholder,” Harig said. “And that’s the community.”