Biotechs flock to new Hagerstown incubator

Facility signals ‘economy of tomorrow’ in Washington County

‘‘We haven’t had something like this before,” he said. ‘‘We got a lot of calls before asking if we had wet labs.”

Funding for the project came from the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, the Maryland Technology Development Corp. and the Washington County board of commissioners.

‘‘This extraordinary facility is the cornerstone in building the economy of tomorrow in Washington County,” David W. Edgerley, DBED secretary, said in a statement.

The new biotech startups will help attract more such companies to Washington County, Marschner said. ‘‘This cluster of activity will provide economic development officials with a visible presence to reference when recruiting larger life science firms to the area,” he said.

The Hagerstown incubator, which opened in 1994, is now one of the largest in the state at 34,000 square feet. It’s larger than ones in downtown Rockville, Silver Spring, Annapolis and one slated to open in Germantown this summer. Among the few bigger ones is the 60,000-square-foot Maryland Technology Development Center in Rockville.

The Hagerstown incubator is about 80 percent leased after some companies recently graduated, Marschner said.

As an auxiliary enterprise of Hagerstown Community College, the incubator provides its fledgling businesses with not just conference rooms and training, but access to student workers and business assistance mini-grants. The college developed a biotechnology curriculum that began last fall, and students can obtain internships at the incubator.