Lawrence made a strong push to attract bioscience companies at an international convention in Chicago this week, a city commissioner said Thursday.

Sue Hack was part of a 17-member delegation from Lawrence to the BIO 2006 conference – one of the largest groups any city in Kansas sent to the assembly.

The size of the group, she said, sent the signal: “This is important, we want to be players” in the bioscience industry.

“I think we are positioned very well to attract a variety of bioscience companies – first in the agricultural area, pharmaceuticals; those are the areas that Kansas is targeting,” she said.

Other Lawrence representatives included Kansas University officials, Douglas County commissioners, Chamber of Commerce representatives and several developers.

They went armed with a selling point few other communities had to offer: the Serologicals building in East Hills Business Park, built but little-used before the pharmaceutical company made other plans.

That gives Lawrence a ready-made facility where a science-oriented company could quickly start business.

“That opened a lot of people’s eyes. … There were a lot of folks who were excited to see that,” Hack said of bioscience entrepreneurs.

She added: “This presents the opportunity for Lawrence to attract high-paying jobs … maybe we can reverse this bedroom community trend.”

Also at the conference, Kansas Bioscience Authority Chairman Clay Blair announced a new program to advance the formation of bioscience start-up companies in the state.

The Community Bioscience Facilities Matching Funds Program will leverage funds from city, county, community, private and other nonprofit sources.

The initiative will provide leveraged matching funds, such as a projected $1 million in grants to communities that invest at least $5 million in the construction of wet lab incubators, bioenergy or biomaterials facilities.

“These projects will enable start-up scientists to have facilities that will lead to the creation of companies and jobs in Kansas,” Blair said.

Lavern D. Squier, president of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, said that the chamber had been working with the city for more than a year to create bioscience labs in the Lawrence area.

The city and county have agreed to chip in $200,000 each per year toward building bioscience labs, Squier said.

Hack said the city may seek out the new state money.

“I think,” she said, “we’ll seek out any money anybody will give us.”