Paul Allen displayed a new model of his plan for Seattle’s South Lake Union area on Tuesday. Here’s a link to the Seattle PI’s story on what it shows:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/220815_lake20.html
Allen and other promoters of creating a new biotech hub on the south shores of Lake Union keep saying that this could help create 20,000 or more biotech jobs. If that sounds like a REALLY high estimate, it is.
Consider that a Milken Institute study released last fall found that only about 8,700 people are working statewide in the “biopharma” industry. Assuming the biotech industry grows statewide by 36 percent over the next decade, as the institute does, that would mean about 12,000 or so Washingtonians would be working in the sector by then. That would still outdo the national growth rate for biotech during the next 10 years, which Milken expects to be just under 30 percent.
That would be great, but it still would leave the region well short of the huge job estimates that keep floating out there for the biotech sector.
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