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 History
The Progress Corporate Park began as the vision of one man
- Dr. Robert Marston, president of the University of Florida
during the early 1980's.
Dr. Marston envisioned an office and research park where university
technology projects and private start-up companies would be
nurtured together into reaching their full potential.
The University of Florida's main campus did not have enough
land to accommodate this research park, but the University
of Florida Foundation owned a large parcel of land in the
city of Alachua. 200 of those acres were designated as Dr.
Marston's research and office park.
The Foundation sought out UF alumni Andrew Hines as their
development partner. Hines was then president of Florida Progress
Corporation, which owned Florida Power.
In 1984, under Hines' direction, the Apalachee Development
Company purchased the property from the University of Florida
Foundation. Two years later, Apalachee applied to the city
of Alachua for approval of a Development of Regional Impact
(DRI) under chapter 380 of the Florida Statutes.
In February of 1987, Alachua issued a development order which
permitted office and research development within the park.
The first building constructed as a result of this order was
our 59,000 square foot main facility. The first tenant in
the new building was the Advanced Material Research Center
of the College of Engineering. In 1989, two more buildings
totaling 45,000 square feet were built across the courtyard.
In 1990, the large animal facility was built and sold to the
Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund for the
benefit of the University of Florida. This board also purchased
6 acres in 1994 and built the Sid Martin Biotechnology Development
Incubator.
 Florida
Power later spun off this property to Echelon International,
which they controlled. In 1998, Echelon and UF entered into
an agreement which provided, among other things, clarification
of the organizations' obligations to one another and set on
paper UF's continued commitment to the Progress Corporate
Park. The university expresses this commitment by promoting
the utilization of the park by UF research programs, faculty
start-up companies and licensees of university technology.
The park's DRI was amended in 1999 to allow for much more
diverse uses of the property, including light industrial,
general office, distribution, medical, retail and hotel use.
A group of local real estate investors purchased the park
in March of 2000 under the name of Innovation Partners, Ltd.
These partners are Phil Hawley, Jim Shaw, Ardene Wiggins,
Davis Rembert, and Darryl Tompkins. Sandy Burgess has managed
the park since the 1980's and continues to do so.
Simultaneous with their purchase, Innovation Partners sold
approximately twenty acres and two buildings to Regeneration
Technologies, Inc. RTI has now built their beautiful new corporate
headquarters in the park.
Innovation Partners has also sold sites to InterMed, Inc.
and Tucker-Davis Technologies, Inc. CPAmerica, the Kidney
Dialysis Center, and a number of other companies have purchased
sites for future buildings, including Hydrosphere Research
Environmental Services, Inc. and Adbiz.
Many of the tenants and landowners in the corporate park regularly
take advantage of the recreational trails in nearby San Felasco
State Park. Located directly south of the corporate park,
San Felasco consists of thousands of acres of pristine woodlands
and has recently opened miles of trails perfect for mountain
biking or horseback riding.
Since Innovation Partners’ purchase of the property
in 2001, there has been more new construction and
development in the park than in all the preceding 15 years
combined.
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