Making Blue Springs a focus of bioscience – specifically animal science – could reshape the workforce and raise the standard of living in Eastern Jackson County.
City and University of Missouri officials have begun outlining ambitious plans they say could lead to $1 billion in investment over 25 to 30 years and could generate thousands of jobs.Those and other players have put up some money to begin lining up property in a 500-acre area along Adams Dairy Parkway.
That’s a first step toward putting these big plans – called the Missouri Innovation Park – in place. Those parties next will look for developers to plan the operation. The first tenants could be in place within a couple of years.
Blue Springs Mayor Carson Ross laid out the bottom line: “This opportunity provides a long-term and unique economic strategy for the city and our surrounding communities. It will enhance our education systems and add high-quality jobs to our communities.”
One particularly exciting part of the project would be the Mizzou Innovation Center, which would occupy only a slice of the property but would consolidate the activities in this region of the University of Missouri campus in Columbia.
The MU campus is one of the few in the country with a med school, a vet school and an animal science school, and resources from all three would be brought together under the heading of comparative medicine. This is part of the bright biosciences economy we’ve heard about for years. It’s profounding encouraging to see that a key piece of that could be in Eastern Jackson County.
