As business executives, government officials and others crowded into a conference room last week to welcome news of a ground-breaking effort to boost bioscience development in Lawrence, talk of high-paying jobs, industry-leading research and community partnerships filled the room.

Turns out the planned $7.5 million project – to revamp a so-called “speculative” building in the East Hills Business Park into a bioscience incubator – is serving as a fitting transition for a year that posed significant challenges throughout the community, yet offered some reasons for optimism into 2007 and beyond.

“What we’re talking about is planting a seed, and the seed could grow and have an abundant harvest,” said Clay Blair, chairman of the Kansas Bioscience Authority, who regards the project as key to cementing Lawrence’s standing as a bio-tech powerhouse not only in Kansas, but nationwide.

“This is not a harvest that will take place in the next year or two. It’s putting in the fundamental process for attracting bioscience companies, and it’s something that will take years.

“But we’re willing to make this multimillion-dollar investment – and to seed this, and fertilize it, and put it in the most positive light to attract businesses to the community and to incubate businesses in the Lawrence/Douglas County area.”

The incubator – set to include high-tech lab equipment, shared conference rooms and dedicated office spaces for promising startups and existing companies looking to test their ideas and develop their technologies – is but the last of many business happenings that reflect on a busy 2006 and a sure-to-be-active 2007.

Among the others:

¢ Berry Plastics started implementing plans, announced in December 2005, to expand operations at its 470,000-square-foot plant in northern Lawrence, vowing to boost employment by 154 workers: 78 during the first three years, then another 76 in the next two. The jobs would come as part of the company’s $118 million plan to add buildings and equipment by 2010.

¢ Hallmark Cards Inc. moved 125 employees out of a production plant in Leavenworth, transferring the large majority of them to the company’s production plant at 101 McDonald Drive in Lawrence, where the Kansas City, Mo.-based company continues to produce stickers, ribbons and – most of all – greeting cards, including the annual White House holiday cards.

¢ Protection One Inc., the only publicly traded company based in Lawrence, announced plans this month to acquire Integrated Alarm Services Inc. in a stock deal valued at nearly $85 million. The acquisition – expected to close by June – will be expected to add about 30 employees to Protection One’s headquarters in the I-70 Business Center, where 70 people already work for the company that provides monitored-security services for residential, multifamily and commercial clients.

A fresh start in 2007

¢ Pearson Government Solutions, the largest private-sector employer in Lawrence with a center that employs 1,600 people in the East Hills Business Park, announced in December that it was being sold for $600 million to Veritas Capital Partners, a New York-based private equity firm. Pearson leaders said the deal would be expected to add more work for the Lawrence complex, which handles call-center and data-processing tasks for more than a dozen clients, most of them government agencies.

¢ The Bristol Groupe, which five years ago built a $12.7 million office building off Wakarusa Drive, received good news in November: Great American Insurance signed a lease to operate a regional crop-insurance office at the center, employing 50 to 60 people. The office will be expected to open by Feb. 1.

¢ Serologicals Corp., sold earlier this year to Millipore Corp., announced in January that it would not bring its 45,000-square-foot production plant in the East Hills Business Park up to full production. In fact, the company walked away from the property entirely, laying off all remaining employees and putting the place up for sale for $24 million. It remains on the market.

¢ Alan Mulally, who grew up in Lawrence and graduated from Lawrence High School and Kansas University, addressed a Lawrence Chamber of Commerce luncheon in May as president and chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, an operation with more than 50,000 employees whose work had produced more than 12,000 Boeing jets flying worldwide. Now he has an even bigger job: In September, Mulally left Boeing to become president and CEO of Ford Motor Co., where he is working to engineer a turnaround for the domestic automaker.

¢ Wal-Mart completed an expansion of its store at 3300 Iowa, making it a full-fledged “supercenter,” complete with a grocery store and an expanded recycling center. The world’s largest retailer also continued its legal wrangling with City Hall over its plans for building a new store at the northwestern corner of Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive.