Great visionaries not only can see the future – they can see it in the present.
Perhaps that’s why DEVCO President Chris Paladino, upon receiving the Visionary Award last week at Bell Works during the 45th annual Edison Patent Awards sponsored by the R&D Council of New Jersey, looked out in the audience and saw more than just other honorees.
Paladino saw teams of scientists. He saw future tenants at the HELIX, the amazing life science innovation ecosystem he is bringing to New Brunswick.
And he couldn’t help but make a sales pitch, rattling off the features of a three-building complex where scientists will be able to not only collaborate, but also take their discovery to innovation and to commercialization – and hopefully create jobs in the state of New Jersey, he said.
Paladino gave the details of what he calls ‘H1’ – a 12-story, 574,000-square-foot building that will include a hub for innovation and startups, a laboratory for translational research and the home of the new 176,000-square-foot Rutgers School of Medicine.
“H1 at the HELIX is a big glass and steel tent with over 900 wet lab benches, 200 dry lab stations, a 35,000-square-foot vivarium with 8,500 cages and fish tanks that could hold 1,500 gallons, a Vector Lab and, of course, other spaces – maker spaces, event spaces, meeting rooms, a food hall open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and a full service bar for happy hour,” he said.
“So, there’s plenty of world-class space, and all are welcome.”
Paladino has been a welcoming force for the life science community – in fact, every community – for decades. He is the master of the public-private partnership, creating buildings and communities open and down the state, but especially in New Brunswick.
That’s why, when Gov. Phil Murphy issued a call to action at the beginning of his administration to restore New Jersey to its former place as a global leader in the innovation economy, Paladino and the New Brunswick Development Corporation went to work, collaborating with Rutgers, the N.J. Economic Development Authority, Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health, Hackensack Meridian Health and Middlesex County, to create the HELIX.
And even though H1 has not been completed, the HELIX already is an acknowledged success. It already is attracting top companies, including Nokia Bell Labs, which will take up the entirety of H2, where it will move from its longtime home in Berkeley Heights.
Murphy, who asked to do a video tribute for the event, offered his gratitude.
“It is impossible to talk about our state’s growing innovation economy without mentioning Chris,” he said. “His impact can be seen up and down our state, from Newark to New Brunswick to Atlantic City and beyond.
“He has revived historic landmarks, offices and theaters, and is helping bring the HELIX, a world-class innovation and technology hub, to life. The HELIX will bring together innovators, industry leaders and educators to pioneer new possibilities and attract new businesses from around the world, right here in New Jersey.
“From the life sciences to generative AI, from climate change to social change, the future will be grown in New Jersey’s state-of-the-art facilities like the HELIX – and we will all look back one day fondly remembering that the seeds of our future were planted by visionaries like Chris Paladino.”
Paladino told the audience that the HELIX will be the only ecosystem in the country where academic researchers, established pharma and biotech companies, entrepreneurs, medical students and faculty will co-locate in an environment of collaboration and discovery – helping creative collisions occur.
The fact that the HELIX is being built across the street from where Thomas Edison would sit at a lunch counter at the Oprah House Pharmacy with the Johnson brothers and Fred Kilmer, discussing innovation, is not lost on him.
Paladino summed it up this way: “The spirit of the HELIX partnership is clearly expressed in my favorite Thomas Edison quote: ‘Hell, there are no rules. We’re trying to accomplish something here,’” he said.
