By Toby Sells - The Commercial Appeal -

Construction has begun on a $22 million research laboratory in the UT-Bioworks Research Park that will help researchers and biotechnology companies get their ideas to market.

The footprint for the 26,000-square-foot, single-story, brick building has been cleared at 45 S. Dudley, and crews are now pouring the foundation of the structure.

Construction work is expected to be complete in a year, but the building will likely be opened in the spring of 2013.

A new company, Memphis Specialized Operations, will run the lab and will employ about 20 to 30 people from entry-level technicians to those with doctorate degrees, according to Memphis Bioworks Foundation chief financial officer Brandon Wellford.

Those employees will work in 18 separate laboratories throughout the building. They will conduct custom research for companies that may not have the facilities or the human resources to do it on their own.

"If you do the math on what we're building here -- including the equipment that goes inside of it -- it is somewhere around $850 per square foot," Wellford said. "Nobody wants to invest in something that you only need two or three times per year and have it sit idle for any period of time."

The laboratory construction site is right around the corner from Maria Gomes-Solecki's office on Madison, where her company, Biopeptides Corp., is developing a vaccine to protect people from Lyme disease.

While most of the scientific work on the project is done in Memphis, it is not done in her office, which she said is a drag on efficiency. She said she hopes to consolidate much of business to the research park when the facilities are complete, and said many more will, too.

"This will definitely make Memphis more attractive to outside investment, to companies wondering if they should relocate to Memphis," Gomes-Solecki said. "It is also a way of retaining people in Memphis, too. There are a lot of people, like post-docs and other well-qualified people, that have laid roots down but have no options (here for their research)."

The laboratory was originally called a vivarium, a place for keeping and raising animals for research. It is designed for the keep and testing of rodents, which Wellford said is a "critical part" of the research path to clinical trials in humans and, finally, to the market.

The lab and the company have been in Bioworks' master plan for years. Financing the project in a down economy was a challenge, Wellford said. But all of it was finally secured late last year with $7 million in state money and about $15 million from banks, tax credits and other grants.

In July, the Industrial Development Board of Memphis and Shelby County gave the laboratory project a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes deal worth $2.1 million over eight years.

-- Toby Sells: (901) 529-2742