ALSO READ: Steve Burrill: $350 million from Capital Fund IV will close this month
San Francisco financier and biotech observer Steve Burrill has made a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showing that he is looking to raise $500 million.
Could Burrill’s Capital Fund IV be the long-awaited, repeatedly-promised, now-reduced-from-$1 billion fund for Elk Run, the mixed-use development in southeastern Minnesota?
According to the filing made on Thursday, none of the $500 million has been raised, but then that doesn’t necessarily mean Burrill doesn’t have commitments for it. In fact a blog is reporting that Rusnano, the state-owned entity formally known as Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies, is investing $200 million in the fund.
Burrill has relationships with funds set up by foreign governments. Minnesota green chemistry firm Segetis, for example, got an investment from the Malaysian Life Sciences Fund, co-managed by Burrill & Company.
More than two years ago when the nation was in the throes of the Great Recession, Burrill declared that he would raise $1 billion for Elk Run by the end of 2009. Half of it would go to startups that relocate to a biotech park inside Elk Run. The other half would go to developing commercial and residential real estate making up the rest of the Elk Run master-planned community.
Since then, the fund has proved illusory the same way the first building has although rumors abound as to the size and the fate of the fund.
Rumors also float on an impending announcement from Elk Run’s developer Tower Investments and its local project manager Geoffrey Griffin. Griffin has a penchant for making announcements that never pan out, but this time the oft-extended deadline set by the city of Pine Island to construct the first building, appears to have a final end point: Aug. 15.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
That may prove to be a tipping point.
Perhaps a formal announcement for the first tenant will be made. Recombinetics, which genetically engineers animals for biomedical and agricultural purposes, has already shown interest.
How the city of Pine Island will be able to create 20 jobs by the end of next year is still a mystery given that even a building is not up. That is their requirement per their agreement with the Minnesota Department of Transportation that has rushed ahead with building an interchange on Highway 52 even as Tower has failed to deliver on the building.
Still, Pine Island residents would likely be relieved to see some structure going up on the sprawling 2,000-acres-plus property that so far has represented a field of dreams.
