The expanded wet lab space at AgStart in Woodland doesn’t even open until this summer, and yet some parts of it are already leased up with a waiting list.
AgStart, an incubator for agriculture and food technology startups, a year ago opened a $1.5 million lab and office complex Lab@AgStart at 1100 Main St. in downtown Woodland. It filled up by the end of last year.
A $1 million expansion is now underway, and AgStart has already leased out all the spots in its new tissue and fermentation lab, said John Selep, president of the AgTech Innovation Alliance, which operates AgStart.
The nonprofit added the fermentation lab because it got so many requests for that kind of space, Selep said.
“We are driven by our customers. They are asking for it,” Selep said.
The existing 4,800-square-foot Lab@AgStart includes coworking space for startups; the Yocha Dehe Lab, a wet chemistry laboratory space with 28 work benches; and the Raley’s Food Lab, a certified food facility.
An expansion now underway is adding over 3,000 square feet of space in the same building, including 26 more lab benches, plus a tissue culture and fermentation lab, which is a new amenity.
“We are going to have a waiting list for tenants in the fermentation lab. One client wanted to take all the space, but we can’t do that,” he said. There are six tenants signed up for the fermentation lab, which will be able to do glass beaker and bench-top fermentation processes. Larger floor-standing and multi-thousand-liter fermentation setups will never be part of the Lab@AgStart, he said. “Our role in life is to help startups.”
Several of the lab’s existing clients are already seeking to build out their own larger labs in West Sacramento after getting started in Woodland. Again, Selep said, that is the lab's role, to get startups the space to develop their business.
“Setting up a lab like this is not easy. And it’s expensive. The startups benefit from sharing the equipment,” Selep said.
Part of the benefit of the shared space is access to expensive equipment that a startup may need to use every once in a while, but which they can’t afford to buy. To that end, Lab@AgStart has multiple refrigerators, freezers and extremely cold freezers, along with spectral analysis equipment and chemical liquid analysis equipment that can be shared by the tenants.
Capital costs to build out a lab are substantial, and AgStart has been successful in bringing in sponsors, supporters and grants. It's about two-thirds of the way to funding the $1 million cost of the expansion, which was supported earlier this week when the Woodland City Council and the Yolo County Board of Supervisors each approved funding of $100,000 to help the Lab@AgStart expand.
“We are relying on the generosity of others to pay for equipment and furnishings,” Selep said, adding that sponsorships and naming rights are still available.
The local governments supported Lab@AgStart as an economic development tool. In its first year, startup companies in the Lab@AgStart have raised about $45 million in private capital and it's brought 50 new jobs, mostly scientific or management, to the region.
“Most of the people working in here are PhDs. I often get the feeling that I’m the least educated person in the room,” said Selep, who graduated from Harvard and Stanford.
Wet labs — equipped for testing and analysis of chemicals or biological matter — are necessary for life sciences and agricultural research and experiments. Wet labs are in critical demand in the region, but most startups don’t have the resources or the creditworthiness to build out a lab themselves. Other startup wet lab spaces locally, including Inventopia in Davis and the Life Science Innovation Center, which is operated by the University of California Davis and HM.Clause in Davis, are consistently full.
