A $57 million construction project is taking the moribund Ann Arbor Research Park back to its roots. It was created in 1959 to lure corporate research facilities to Ann Arbor, but when Grace Shackman checked in a 2018 Observer article (“The Underwhelming History of the Ann Arbor Research Park”), just six of the twenty-seven buildings at S. State and Ellsworth were devoted to research. Since then, the only activity has been the construction of a pair of hotels.
That changed last year, when city council approved a twelve-year, 50 percent tax break for Sartorius BioAnalytics Instruments. The 130,000-square-foot lab and office building will house staff currently spread across four sites, including one on W. Morgan Rd. that Sartorius acquired with Ann Arbor–based Essen BioScience in 2017.
Founded in Germany in 1870, Sartorius makes bioreactors and other equipment used to develop and produce “biopharmaceuticals”—drugs and vaccines made from living cells. Operations network strategy manager Peter Mertens says their technology makes drug development faster and more efficient, “so that more people have access to better medicine … We are part of the solution in the fight against many diseases such as cancer, dementia, or hemophilia.”
Mertens says that “currently, there are about 190 employees in the Ann Arbor area, and this project is expected to increase that number to about 300 within three years.” Internal communications manager Corris Little says the jobs will be in “critical areas such as product development, operations, and various support functions.”
Along with bringing research back to the research park, the project supports the city’s A2Zero sustainability goals: Mertens says the building is expected to attain LEED Gold environmental certification. “The premises will include features such as the capacity for up to seventy-five electric vehicle charging stations, 200-kilowatt solar panels on the roof, and the research park’s first storm runoff pond designed to counteract flooding and erosion,” he says. And because Sartorius combined smaller lots into a sixteen-acre site, there’s room for future expansion.
