CVRD Inco funds Sudbury mining innovation park.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: NEWS - Northern Centre for Advanced Technology

Darryl Lake's dream of a Finlandia-style innovation park for the mining industry has come to full fruition.

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Inspired by the technology centres he toured in the Scandinavian country in the early 1990s, the executive director of Sudbury's NORCAT is eager to get shovels in the ground this fall for a new Innovation and Commercialization Park on the campus of Cambrian College.

His 20-year friendship with Fred Stanford, CVRD Inco's Ontario president, has led to a partnership between the Sudbury miner and the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT) with a $2 million donation for the proposed expansion of the technology centre.

The Sept. 20 announcement was attended by Ontario Mining Association president Chris Hodgson and Rick Bartolucci, Sudbury MPP and Minister of Northern Development and Mines, whose government delivered a $1.5 million contribution for the innovation park in late August.

It's the first major contribution of private money into the innovation park that should not only grow NORCAT's physical capacity, but its intellectual one.

Over the years, NORCAT has created a residency program providing office and shop space for new business start-ups, and developed partnerships between Sudbury companies and the Canadian Space Agency and NASA on a deep drilling project in space.

But the highly successful technology centre has outgrown its relatively cramped 32,000-square-foot digs on Barrydowne Road.

The innovation park, to be located off Maley Drive in Sudbury's east end, will feature a 40,000-square-foot building with business incubation space for new and growing small companies geared mainly to the mining industry.

Lake says the CVRD Inco donation is "recognition of (NORCAT) being a major player in one of the most fundamental industries that this country has:" its mining sector.

As well, he says it establishes NORCAT as national and global experts in economic development.

In the coming weeks and months, Lake expects more public and private investment announcements to come with the arrival in Sudbury of at least three heavyweight anchor tenants in the park, specializing in the manufacturing and mine-related industries.

"We're expecting that the private sector will at least have equalled any government support."

Lake says they are currently partnering with other companies and a Texas university in taking space technology and applying it underground.

NORCAT has nurtured a special relationship with Inco since the...