With the sounds of drills and hammers ringing in the background, it doesn’t take long to realize that the Helix Center Biotech Incubator is still a work in progress. The construction debris everywhere is another big clue.
But all the hard work is getting ready to pay off.
“There is a lot of really great entrepreneurial activity,” said Beth Noonan of the St. Louis County Economic Council. “We see it all the time in the work that we do. We see it when we go to different activities and events. There’s a need out there.”
It’s a need that Noonan, as the quasi-governmental organization’s vice president of biosciences and technology business development, hopes the new Helix initiative will fill. When the dust settles later this month, organizers will cut the ribbon on more than 30,000 square feet of space in a Creve Coeur office park where they aim to nurture startups in the area’s nascent life sciences field.