Today
brought news that Cohera Medical, a growing medical device company
headquartered on Pittsburgh’s North Side, is leaving town for Raleigh, North
Carolina. Raleigh is the biggest city in the Research Triangle Park area which
has an established base of medical and biology centered companies. It’s where a lot of Philadelphia based
pharmaceutical firms established offices when looking for a sunnier clime and
friendlier tax environment. So while
this makes sense on a number of business levels, I have to say that this sort
of outmigration happening once a local company is nurtured to a sustainable
phase has got to stop if Pittsburgh is to economically progress in any
meaningful way.
The
galling element of this story is that Cohera Medical is a spin out of the
University of Pittsburgh. The company
had just received a $50 million investment by New York investors KKR and I have
no doubt is under much pressure to now produce on a scale proportionate to
that investment. But I must point a
finger at Pitt and ask how much of a role they could have played in helping
this bio-med company maintain its Pittsburgh base? Did Pitt even try? What of Pitt’s vaunted efforts to build
enterprises in the region as an outgrowth of their medical research?
Where’s
the commitment Pitt?
