The groundbreaking for a 45,000 square-foot development dubbed ARK Innovation Center took place recently in St. Petersburg, a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States, in the presence of Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners, leaders of St. Petersburg, local business leaders within the Tampa Bay region, and Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of ARK Invest.
According to Wood, the US$ 15.8M ARK Innovation Center project is intended to retain and attract top talents in the region. This state-of-the-art facility will be used in hosting business incubators for startups, with a focus on genomic sequencing, adaptive robotics, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and energy storage. It is aimed at providing to entrepreneurs and tech startups in St. Petersburg and the Tampa Bay region.
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An insight into the ARK Innovation Center design
Located at the intersection of 4th Street South and 11th Avenue South in St. Petersburg, the new 45,000 sq-ft ARK Innovation Center will be developed as a 3-story building, designed to accommodate up to 200 people, for Innovation meetings, investment pitch sessions, and innovation-related community gatherings.
The design plans also include a 30,000 square feet innovation lab, with a dedicated incubator space consisting of podcast studios and a community café plus an additional 100,000 square feet will be used for corporate innovation. The Innovation Center will also feature co-working office spaces and conference rooms, along with several state-of-the-art spaces for training and knowledge exchange sessions.
This facility is scheduled to open in July 2023 and according to officials, by 2026 the Innovation Center would have created up to 1,265 jobs and made an economic impact of about US$ 28M. The director of Pinellas County Economic Development, Dr. Cynthia Johnson also mentioned that this move would change the global landscape and position Pinellas County as the innovation hub of the U.S., with St Petersburg as the epicenter.Â
Project enablers
Funding and other incentives for the ARK Innovation Center project come from various sources, which include the US$ 2.6M in design and construction costs, covered by Pinellas County; an US$ 11.3M grant awarded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration, for the project’s design and construction; and also St. Petersburg’s generous donation of a 2.5-acre piece of land within the Innovation District.
Beck Group is the project’s architect, while Bandes Construction of Dunedin has been tapped to be the contractor.Â
