Campus Closes Deal for Biotechnology Park
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NORTHRIDGE — In her last official appearance as Cal State Northridge’s third president, Blenda J. Wilson oversaw a $361,000 lease payment Thursday from biomedical entrepreneur Alfred E. Mann at a groundbreaking ceremony for a planned $80-million on-campus biotech park.
The development, expected to generate research opportunities for students and faculty and annual lease payments worth $800,000 to the university, is one of the largest private-public partnerships in the San Fernando Valley. It is set for completion by the end of 2000.
Mann’s firm, MiniMed, of Sylmar makes insulin pumps and has doubled its sales in the past year, growing from 526 workers in 1996 to nearly 1,000.
Wilson’s tenure as president ends today, and on July 1 she will head the multibillion-dollar Nellie Mae Foundation, a New England-based educational reform organization.
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