The Bioscience & Technology Business Center on Kansas University’s West Campus set to open in mid-June, will provide incubator space for budding bioscience companies in Lawrence.

On a cold late-winter morning, the humming of heavy machinery and banging of steel floated through Kansas University’s West Campus.

On a hillside along Becker Drive, almost tucked into a grove of trees, was the concrete and steel skeleton of the 20,000-square-foot Bioscience & Technology Business Center. The building, set to open in mid-June, will provide incubator space for budding bioscience companies in Lawrence.

Not far away, walls were being finished and windows being installed in KU’s 110,000-square-foot School of Pharmacy building. Next door are two of KU’s largest research labs.

“It’s a very encouraging picture for the life sciences,” said Kevin Boatright, director of communications for KU’s Office of Research and Graduate Studies.

Soon, professors can teach classes at the new pharmacy building, walk across the lawn to their lab space and then cross the street to their startup company or industrial project.

“It will make for a cluster of bioscience facilities unlike anything else in Kansas,” Boatright said.

Both buildings are signs that in an otherwise hurting economy, the biosciences are thriving in Lawrence and Northeast Kansas.

While not immune from the economic turmoil, growth in some bioscience sectors is outpacing the negative effects of the recession, said Tom Thornton, president and CEO of the Kansas Bioscience Authority.

Large pharmaceutical companies are outsourcing more clinical research in the region. The animal health science industry has seen a huge market emerge around pets. And the bioenergy sector has just exploded, he said.

“There is this sense that even in these dismal economic times, the biosciences are sort of the bright shining star,” Thornton said.

More than a year ago, Kansas made significant strides in the bioscience arena when it landed the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, a $450 million federal research lab to be built in Manhattan.

Such a catch was one of the reasons Kansas was listed among the top 10 states in the country for biotechnology strength, according to the magazine Business Facilities.

“I think we went from big bold visions set by the legislators and maybe this question of ‘can we really pull this off’ to a notion of ‘not only can we pull it off, but how big can we get,'” Thornton said.

At a KBA stakeholder meeting in January, Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson urged the group not to rest on the success of NBAF.

Thornton said the KBA hasn’t.

Part of the proof are the projects under way in Lawrence.

The Bioscience & Technology Business Center, a $7.25 million undertaking, is being financed through partnerships involving KU, the city of Lawrence, Douglas County and the KBA.

The incubator space will provide room for seven to 10 companies. Those companies could be spinoffs from KU research labs, startups looking to locate to Lawrence and major corporations.

LaVerne Epp, president and chairman of the Lawrence-Douglas County Biosciences Authority, said the authority is working with several prospective tenants from all three of those markets. The goal of the incubator is to keep biosciences companies formed around KU research in Lawrence.

“It embodies so much of what is going right, not just in Lawrence but all over the state,” Thornton said. “It’s everyone coming together figuring out what are the priorities, what is going to really work for us.”

Just down the road from the incubator is the School of Pharmacy. The new building, expected to be finished in August, ties into one of the state’s main thrust in the bioscience arena: earning National Cancer Institute designation for the KU Cancer Center. To help back the effort, the KBA has funneled almost $4.8 million to KU to bring in top-level research-ers. Key to NCI designation is attracting faculty to KU that have landed millions of dollars in federal research grants.

“If you are going to come here, you are now going to have excellent lab space, you are now going to be adjacent to the School of Pharmacy and an incubator,” Boatright said. “All are attractive for the recruiting of faculty and the retention of faculty.”

Going forward, one of the biggest challenges for the bioscience industry will simply be maintaining momentum.

“That is something we spend an awful lot of time on, is what will it take for us to land the next big thing,” Thornton said.