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Scripps gives up on Mecca Farms
The biotech company tells Palm Beach it prefers a different site from one that is being held up by an environmental analysis.
Associated Press
Published December 8, 2005
WEST PALM BEACH - The Scripps Research Institute has told Palm Beach County commissioners it prefers to build its planned biotechnology park at the Florida Atlantic University campus in Jupiter, a decision that came two weeks after construction on its original site was halted.
The San Diego biomedical institute's executive board voted Wednesday to move from the planned Mecca Farms site in the county's rural western region to an urban location near Interstate 95. The move would have to be approved by county commissioners.
County officials voted last month to stop construction at the original site after a federal judge ruled that key roads or other support infrastructure couldn't be built until a broad environmental impact analysis is finished - a process that could take two years.
"We have done so based on our belief that this site will allow Scripps Florida to be the catalyst for making Florida a leading center for scientific and medical research," Scripps' chief operating officer Doug Bingham said in a letter to the county commission.
The federal judge's ruling was in response to a lawsuit followed by the Florida Wildlife Federation and Sierra Club, who argued that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to do a comprehensive environmental study before allowing Scripps to begin work at the Mecca Farms site, near the edge of the Everglades.
[Last modified December 8, 2005, 00:49:13]
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