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One of the latest developments to pop up in the West Midtown neighborhood of Atlanta is not only set to transform the skyline, it could help the city secure its place as a hub for life science, medical, and healthcare innovation.
Science Square, located on 18 acres due west of Georgia Tech’s campus, is set to open this quarter. It will serve as a mixed-use space catering to R&D-heavy companies…something that has been sorely lacking for local healthcare startups. The first to move in will be Portal Innovations, a Chicago-based life sciences venture capital firm that will open a fully-equipped lab space for budding Atlanta entrepreneurs.
Portal is bringing two things that local life science innovators say have been missing in the city: industry-specific venture capital and lab space.
Portal has quickly become a staple of Chicago’s entrepreneurial ecosystem with its flagship location in the Fulton Market. The fund raised $100 million earlier this year. John Flavin, founder and CEO of Portal Innovations, said that expanding into Atlanta will help more entrepreneurs build locally without having to move to other life science and HealthTech hubs.
“Atlanta was a natural next choice for us because of the activities that are happening around Tech Square…the building blocks and the entrepreneurial culture were clearly already present in Atlanta. But what was missing was that infrastructure and the seed capital for life sciences companies,” he told Hypepotamus last year. “We feel like it would be a fertile ground where startups as an overtime larger companies will want to be.”
Atlanta’s HealthTech Foundation
Boston and the Bay Area are well-known for churning out successful healthcare-related startups. But Atlanta’s budding life science sector – an innovation umbrella that includes HealthTech, BioTech, medical device startups – has a pretty solid foundation on which to build.
The city is home to the CDC, two medical schools, and the top…
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