A planned business park in York could create more than 500 ‘green’ jobs.
The York Vale Bio Business Park is proposed to go on land just off the A64 to the north-east of the city.
Plans are expected to be submitted to City of York Council in the coming months, and if approved, work could start next year.
York-based developer North Star and building contractor Simpson are working with the Biorenewable Development Company (BDC) on the scheme.
The BDC is an R&D biorefinery centre owned by the University of York and works with academia and industry to convert plants, microbes and biowastes into profitable biorenewable products.
It operates a successful bio park in Dunnington, which is owned by Simpson. This is now fully occupied, with a waiting list of companies wishing to take space.
The new business park, to be situated opposite the Highwayman Café, would provide flexible space for new firms and successful companies to grow into, within this fast-expanding sector.
It would also help the Local Enterprise Partnership’s ambitions for York and North Yorkshire to be the UK’s first Carbon negative region and the BioYorkshire initiative, which involves the University of York, Fera Science and Askham Bryan College working together to build the region’s bioeconomy sector.
Plans have yet to be submitted but a landscape-led masterplan, for around 300,000 sq ft of space, would include a new roundabout on the A64 to serve the new and existing businesses and vastly improve road safety at this accident black spot.
Already, there are about 40 successful businesses at the existing business park and these plans would see the current buildings upgraded and made more sustainable.
A spokesperson for the partnership involved in delivering the plans said the scheme would help cement York’s place as a model region in the bioeconomy sector.
The existing Sand Hutton and Dunnington sites were full and York had no other suitable sites,
“If we don’t create more space then businesses will be lost to other parts of the UK, which we know is already happening.”
York Central MP Rachael Maskell has long campaigned on the BioYorkshire initiative creating jobs and wealth to the York area.
The Labour MP said: "We are already witnessing the power of BioYorkshire as this growing economic cluster is attracting inward investment and the creation of good quality jobs for the city.
“Even in these early days of focusing on this emerging scientific sector, we can see the scope of growth in the green economy in tackling some of the greatest challenges in agriculture and fuel transition.”
She added: “We are seeing the reality that businesses want to invest in the city and want to provide jobs for local people."Clearly the detail of the proposals will need scrutiny to ensure that this new bioscience campus is built in the right place and in the right way, but it is demonstrating how BioYorkshire as our region’s anchor project will benefit the whole city in years to come.”
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