By Don Erwin
In 2020 I wrote Buffalo Hunting in Alabama, a novel about economic development.
One of the plot lines involved Alabama competing against other states for a giant, blockbuster pharmaceutical plant. In my novel, the Birmingham metro won the project.
Fiction has now become real life. Sort of. I got the state right but the metro wrong.
Congratulations to Huntsville for winning Eli Lilly’s huge new pharma plant to employ 450 full-time workers, 3,000 construction workers, and invest $6 billion in the Huntsville area. Alabama is fortunate it has Huntsville.
With UAB and Southern Research, many have assumed that Birmingham is the state’s life sciences giant, but that thinking may be living in the past, along with thinking that Birmingham is the state’s largest city.
The Huntsville Metro has less than half the Birmingham metro’s population, but Huntsville has shown it can win anything it wants, from Space Command to Meta to Toyota/Mazda to Eli Lilly.
Birmingham and Huntsville both have some mid-sized pharma operations, but according to published reports, Lilly explicitly cited its proximity to Huntsville’s HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology as a reason for its site decision.
In March 2024, the Waymaker Group did a study to help the City of Hoover focus on the types of companies to attract. Most expected the report would enthusiastically recommend pursuing life sciences companies, since the metro has UAB and Southern Research, and Hoover has Biocryst and Biohorizons, a medical device maker.
Instead, the Waymaker report said the following:
“UAB anchors the ecosystem as a nationally top-tier research powerhouse, securing over $713 million in R&D expenditures, primarily focused on life sciences. However, their dismal technology transfer outcomes lag every benchmark university, reducing their ability to spin out high-value startups that grow locally.”
It continued:
“Meanwhile, the MSA’s early-stage accelerators concentrate in downtown Birmingham, but with inadequate access to risk capital, seasoned mentorship, or structured support programming, they have struggled to translate their work into large raises, exits, or local scale stories.”
It’s hard (and perhaps ungrateful) to criticize UAB because they do so much good for Birmingham. They provide world-class healthcare, lots of jobs, attract research dollars, and generate a huge economic impact. There’s some truth to the old joke that without UAB, Birmingham would be Meridian, Mississippi. Nevertheless, it must be said that UAB is not very good at turning research dollars into products.
Back in 2017, the Milken Institute published a report titled “Concept to Commercialization: The Best Universities for Technology Transfer.”
It ranked UAB 155th in its ability to translate research funding into commercialization, behind Southeastern universities such as the University of Florida (3rd), Georgia Tech (32nd), Duke (34th), Vanderbilt (42nd), UNC-Chapel Hill (44th), Univ. of Georgia (51st), Clemson (57th), Emory (72nd), Univ. of Tennessee (82nd), Univ. of Arkansas (87th), Florida State ( 88th), Univ. of Alabama (135th), Auburn (141th), and the Univ. of Mississippi (146th). UAB did beat Mississippi State (157th).
The overhead from research funding builds tall buildings, employs people, and allows researchers to publish papers, but the ultimate purpose of research funding (especially taxpayer funded) is to create products to benefit humanity.
For Birmingham to be successful, it must:
First, focus on the right things. Repaving streets, demolishing old houses, and persuading people not to camp out in Linn Park are community development, not economic development. Economic development is helping new companies form, helping existing companies expand, and attracting world-class companies that can bring thousands of good jobs. Birmingham must do a good job of both community development and economic development.
Second, Birmingham metro cities and counties must work together. In 1993, Alabama showed everyone what working together can accomplish when it won the Mercedes-Benz project, perhaps the single most important industrial project in the state’s history.
In 1993, Alabama didn’t produce a single auto. Today, Alabama produces more than one million autos/year, and fifty thousand people work in Alabama’s auto industry.
After Alabama won Mercedes, William Dorsey, the head of Mercedes’ site selection company, wrote the following:
“THE CRITICAL DIFFERENCE: The underlying reason for the selection of Tuscaloosa was not cost. Rather, the strong partnership demonstrated by Gov. Jim Folsom, the state Legislature, state government agencies, city and county government, the cities of Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, and the statewide business community virtually assures a successful project for Mercedes-Benz. Enthusiasm and positive attitudes were the primary differentiating elements.” – Site Selection Magazine, April 1994
In 1993, Alabama had many challenges, but those challenges didn’t keep it from succeeding.
Birmingham needs to take a page from Alabama’s 1993 playbook.
Other columns written by Don Erwin you might enjoy:
Don Erwin was an economic developer for twelve years. He is the author of Buffalo Hunting in Alabama, a novel about the competition among cities and states to attract economic development projects. He lives in the Birmingham metro.
David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown. He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).
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