Delaware has allocated additional money for ready-to-go laboratory space statewide.
Before Delaware’s General Assembly adjourned in Dover on June 30, 2021, legislators approved allocating an additional $10 million to its lab grant program.
“It’s really exciting because it signals support from kind of the broader community that this is something that one - it's a program that through the pilot phase has been able to find a little bit of success and traction and two - there’s a demand for this type of product; the product being lab space and companies that are continuing to grow in Delaware,” said Noah Olson, acting director of the Delaware Prosperity Partnership (DPP).
He says the DPP is responsible for continuing to vet companies to ensure that they are at the right phase to qualify for the grant.
“We’re still going through a careful review process when considering new companies to make sure that they’re falling within the right growth period - they’re at the right growth period to need this additional space," said Olson. "And by using additional space, they’re going to be able to catapult themselves into new growth and from our point of view hopefully also create jobs and expand their footprint here in Delaware.”
Olson adds the companies need to be working with developers on a specific project in order to apply for a grant offering up to 33% of lab space fit-out costs.
DPP commissioned a 2018-2019 study that surveyed 60 Delaware science-sector organizations to gauge current and future lab-space needs. Roughly a dozen respondents identified a need for at least 150,000 additional square feet of lab space in Delaware over the next few years.
Olson says so far, one company went through the program this past May; he adds that a few more will go through at the end of summer.
He says the projects are confidential so he does not have a firm number that he can share.
Olson says he can share that there is a steady number of companies for the rest of this year that should be applying for a grant and trying to take advantage of the program.
