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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes To Build $194 Million Production Facility in Beloit, WI

06/23/2011
A medical R&D company has announced it will build its new $194 million, 82,000-sq.-ft. production facility in Beloit, WI, on a 33-acre site adjacent to the Gateway Business Park in Rock County. NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes (NMR) of Madison, WI, plans to break ground by mid-2012, and begin production sometime in 2013.

The development is projected to create about 150 jobs by 2016. Most positions will be filled by scientists and engineers, but "several" jobs will be accounting, customer service, sales, material-handling and shipping positions.

When fully operational, NorthStar's technology will establish a more secure, cost-effective and redundant domestic source of molybdenum-99, which in turn produces a key diagnostic imaging medical isotope called technetium-99m. That isotope supports 50,000 diagnostic procedures every day in the U.S. The company's products will be shipped to nuclear pharmacies throughout the nation.

Founded in 2004, NMR researches and develops proprietary, medical radioisotope diagnostic and therapeutic applications to meet a host of research and pharmaceutical development needs. Some of its programs assist clinical trial efforts in the development of therapies to fight diseases such as cancer and HIV. Earlier this year the company announced it had received an investment from Hendricks Holding Company, Inc., a diversified global company headquartered in Beloit, WI.

NMR's President George P. Messina said the selection process for the facility's location "was made easy for us by the attitude and willingness of the leaders of the City [of Beloit]."

Accordign to Andrew Janke, executive director of the Greater Beloit Economic Development Corporation, the City plans to fund a $50,000 grant to train new employees (the Beloit City Council votes on this July 5). In addition, the City will buy the project's site's acreage, and then sell the land to NorthStar for $1. It also intends to provide NMR with a TID-funded direct, developer pay-as-you-go incentive giving the company 10 annual payments in an amount equal to 35 percent of its assessed increment to the TIF District.

The state's incentives contribution is the designation of the NorthStar project as an Enterprise Zone development for five years. During that time NMR gets up to $14 million in state tax credits based on new payroll and capital investments.

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