Fitzsimons Innovation Community has maintained a fast pace of development over the past 10 years, building capacity to meet market needs. With an increase in the demand for move-in ready life sciences lab space, the Community invests in existing facilities and new developments. The Community’s newly redesigned interactive website aids new prospects in choosing the Aurora-based innovation center to plant their company flag.

Colorado BioScience Association President and CEO, Elyse Blazevich, spoke with Fitzsimons Innovation Community Vice President of Business Development, April Giles, about the Community’s momentum.

Q: Tell us about the role of Fitzsimons Innovation Community for the Colorado life sciences ecosystem.

Fitzsimons Innovation Community is home to the boldest visionaries in health sciences, working together on breakthroughs. On our campus, we have more than 80 companies and 800 employees in pharmaceuticals, cell and gene therapy, medical devices, molecular biology, diagnostics, and more. We are proud partners with universities, local economic development agencies, state and local governments, and the bioscience industry to advance scientific discoveries.

Fitzsimons Innovation Community is the only organization in the Rocky Mountain West that offers specialized life sciences space with the opportunity to work alongside researchers and clinicians at a world-class medical destination. Most people don’t realize that Fitzsimons Innovation Community and the adjacent $5.8 billion CU Anschutz Medical Campus are one of the largest bioscience developments in the nation, representing the second-largest economic engine in Colorado behind Denver International Airport.

Q: Fitzsimons Innovation Community is experiencing rapid recent growth. What investments are you making to meet current and future demands for lab space?

Fitzsimons Innovation Community is in the midst of a 10-year infrastructure and facilities expansion project that allows companies to plan and customize scientific workspace, company headquarters, or living space in the heart of the Rocky Mountain West. From the start, the Fitzsimons Innovation Community team imagined creating a leading innovation center—where the best and the brightest advance important discoveries in health and care—and that’s exactly what we’ve done. We offer superior custom workspace, a collaborative entrepreneurial environment, and resources to make sure our Community members have what they need to succeed.

With the increase in market demand for lab space, we partner with our Community members to meet their immediate needs and offer flexibility to expand within the Community and share resources. Our team is currently working on spec labs for one of our existing buildings, Bioscience 3, to support startups as they grow and succeed.

We look to the future and the next phases of our campus development with the same goals, but bigger. Our objective is to marry up with the market to deliver products aligned with company growth cycles. Bioscience 5 is the latest addition to our phased campus expansion. It is the first building in our community offering full-scale commercial manufacturing, with a focus on cell and gene therapy manufacturing due to the significant growth in this area. For perspective, at the end of 2021 there were more than 2,400 ongoing clinical trials and $22.7 billion in investments pouring into this sector.

We’re also modeling Bioscience 4 as we recognize the industry growth and the pace of investments happening in Colorado and nationally.

Q: How will launching your new website help attract companies to Fitzsimons Innovation Community?

Our new interactive website allows us to deliver an extraordinary experience as the digital front door for the Community before people set foot on campus. This investment elevates the first interaction with the Community that matches the advancements happening here.

We built this new resource with site selectors in mind, to aid companies in choosing Fitzsimons Innovation Community. Improved navigation helps visitors easily find information to advance in their relationship with us. We showcase each building’s capacity of space, common amenities, and a sense of place. Community details are outlined in a straightforward manner, with rich content presenting a strong image of the current and future Fitzsimons Innovation Community development. And of course, we elevate the benefits of the location from the proximity to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus to the residential and living aspects and Colorado lifestyle.

Some of our favorite new elements include a stunning aerial tour with new photography to provide a more concrete sense of the development and highly-detailed and thoughtfully-crafted digital imagery that allow audiences to envision the future phases of our Community.

Q: Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA) champions a collaborative life sciences ecosystem because we are #strongertogether. How has being an active participant in our life sciences community supported your success?

Fitzsimons Innovation Community values and facilitates access to support and training that our member companies need to thrive and grow. CBSA represents the interests and needs of all our Community members, advocating on behalf of the life sciences community. Many of our companies are members and sponsors of CBSA, and we have CBSA representation on our Board of Directors which is made up of leaders in the bioscience industry, the University of Colorado, and the City of Aurora.