Help with Scripps lab

Palm Beach County commissioners are right to finance a second lab building for The Scripps Research Institute, but they need to insist on full repayment from the building's eventual owner, Florida Atlantic University.

There's no question that the building will help Scripps succeed. It doubles the amount of lab space so that Scripps, which has 120 employees, can keep hiring. More scientists mean more spinoff businesses, which will bring more jobs -- at least that was the pitch that led Palm Beach County to pledge $300 million-plus to lure Scripps.

A second building also buys time if legal rulings stall construction at the Mecca Farms site. Once Scripps moves to Mecca and abandons its FAU labs, FAU can occupy the building, giving it an advantage in recruiting scientists and students. Extra space could be made available to private companies that can't build their own labs, a glaring void in the county's nascent biotech capability.

But how is it Palm Beach County's responsibility to help pay for such a building? Unlike the first building, needed to get Scripps started while it awaited a permanent campus, the county is under no obligation to build this one. The county is willing to finance the work, however, since FAU can't come up with its first payment until 2009. But FAU, not the county, is going to own the building. The university has agreed to pay $11 million of the $13 million cost, assuming the county contributes $2 million, as it did for the first building. But if this building is so important to hold Scripps while the site Gov. Bush sought is prepared, then the state should pay for it.

This will not be the last time commissioners are asked to put up even more money to assure a payoff from their investment in Scripps. Tough decisions on incentives to draw spinoffs will be made tougher by the certainty that some of those companies will fail. This proposal is made easier by the knowledge that the building will benefit a state university and the county will get its money back.