Daily News/DINA RUDICK George Dunn, president of the Middle Michigan Development Corporation, stands in the empty shell of a building that awaits transformation. He holds an artist's rendition of the building's new image.

By Cheryl Wade of the Daily News
    MOUNT PLEASANT – When Donald Tomalia went looking for a location with the right kind of chemistry labs and a good library for his new company, Central Michigan University made "a remarkable argument" to put it there instead of the coasts, he said.
    "They proved to us this is a truly attractive place to locate," said Tomalia, a Midlander and president and chief technical officer for Dendritic Nanotechnologies Ltd., or DNT.
    His company will develop new products using dendrimers – synthetic compounds with branching structures that can be used in a wide variety of applications. Nanotechnology, the fabrication of these structures, is receiving worldwide attention as a new field of science. It is expected to have strategic uses in the life sciences, electronics and materials industries.
    The company's offices now are on the fourth floor of CMU's Park Library and labs are in the university's Dow Science Building. Eventually, the company will move into a business incubator, now just a shell structure in The Center for Applied Research and Technology at Central Michigan University.
    The center, previously called University Park, is a complex of modern buildings planned as a haven for up and coming high-tech businesses.
    The center is one of 11 SmartZones designated by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. As such, it can capture money for 12 years from future increases in property taxes and spend it on marketing, shared facilities, and amenities such as roads and sewers.
    This SmartZone has more Midland connections than just Tomalia. The Dow Chemical Co. will use the center for conducting business intelligence and data mining, said Robert Berry, chief technology officer at CMU. "We're looking at this as a long-term relationship," Berry said.
    CMU hopes to attract Dow Corning Corp. and Meijer as well, Perry said.
    Besides two hotels and a restaurant, the center has a conference facility, a wellness center, an office center of five buildings and CME Mitsuba, a Japanese/British venture that makes electrical motors and assemblies for the auto industry and is Mount Pleasant's biggest taxpayer. George Dunn, president of Middle Michigan Development Corp. – Isabella County's economic development arm – has seen it grow.
    "At this moment we have trustees and a president who are very, very committed to the development of this project," Dunn said.
    CMU's data mining project with Dow was two years in the making, said Joe Kerbleski, senior architect at Dow.
    Dow looked to CMU to train its people to use SAP software, used by many large corporations. CMU and Dow pulled in IBM, with the idea that IBM could see its machines used in a research laboratory, Kerbleski said.
    Data mining is the process that makes sense of a deluge of data about a company's business marketplace, sales and competitors. An IBM staff member is working with CMU to help develop the internal expertise and computer hardware to make sense out of this data, Kerbleski said. CMU then could develop research programs for graduate students.
    The link between Tomalia's company and the Midland Economic Development Council is an example of how cooperation among county or regional development groups can be a better choice than being territorial.
    When MEDC Executive Director Jenee Velasquez realized Midland didn't have the laboratory facilities to land DNT, she took representatives of Tomalia's company to CMU while they toured possible sites.
    "We're very proud to be a regional partner with CMU," Velasquez said. As companies move in and grow, spinoff jobs in other businesses follow, and hopefully Midland could snag some of those, she said.
    Velasquez said there are plans to build a chemistry research laboratory in Midland. The MEDC has begun discussions with one potential client that could use the lab, which would be built in modules as other prospective tenants locate there.
    Middle Michigan Development Corp. also has expanded its geographic horizons, taking Clare County under its wing. Dunn is looking for a first tenant in a new 60-acre industrial park in Farwell. Like Velasquez, Dunn recognizes any rivalry among counties doesn't mean that much to companies looking for homes.
    "When I'm out talking to a company in Japan or South Carolina or southeast Michigan, they don't care what Mount Pleasant or Clare or Midland is," he said. "They want to know the general geographic location."