Missouri’s Cortex Innovation Community Is Expanding With New Development
- October 21, 2016
The Cortex Innovation Community in St. Louis, Missouri, is expanding with a new $170 million dollar development. The expanded campus will include a 180,000 sq. ft. building containing labs and tech space, a fitness center and a 13,500 sq. ft. “innovation hall”. Additional buildings include a five-story, 1,000-car parking garage surrounded by more than 200 studio, one and two bedroom apartments and will include an additional 20,000 sq. ft. of ground level retail space, and a separate 150 room boutique hotel and restaurant.
“What Cortex is doing is building a community, not just building buildings,” said Cortex President and Chief Executive Dennis Lower. “It takes more than office and laboratory space to attract and keep talent. More restaurants, a fitness center and residences are some of the amenities our businesses want and need.”
The Cortex Innovation Community was created in 2002 through an initial investment of $29 million from Washington University, BJC HealthCare, the University of Missouri – St. Louis, Saint Louis University and the Missouri Botanical Garden. It has since grown into the region’s largest innovation hub, generating 3,800 tech-related jobs and more than $500 million in investment.
“This concept of innovation community or knowledge community is evolving internationally right now,” Lower said. “In many ways, it’s being viewed by cities globally as an economic development tool that’s bringing the best-paid jobs back into the urban core.”
With its strategic location, globally connected infrastructure, economic diversity, competitive business and labor costs, highly-skilled and hard working talent and a statewide commitment to attracting companies and investment, Missouri is a place where companies come to grow and thrive.