By Larry Fugate, Special to The Pine Bluff Commercial
June 5, 2010...William Carpenter, the chief executive officer of Consensus Biolabs LLC, took U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor on a tour Friday afternoon of the preclinical laboratory here he hopes to acquire from Charles River Laboratories Inc. and link up with the National Center for Toxicological Research and the Pine Bluff Arsenal.
Pryor said he has wanted to tour the 87,000 square foot Redfield lab for some time and took advantage of Little Rock-based Consensus Biolabs’ offer to look over the facility.
Charles River Laboratories of Wilmington, Mass., closed and mothballed the lab in 2009 during a consolidation of its labs, but has since signed an agreement to sell the lab and its 40 acres to Consensus Biolabs, but the ailing economy has slowed financing of the purchase.
“I want to help utilize these assets and get this place up and running,” Pryor told reporters following the tour. “I feel it is up and moving, but we just haven’t got there.”
Jack A. McNulty of Pine Bluff, a member of Arkansas Economic Development Commission, and Lou Ann Nisbett, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Alliance of Jefferson County, accompanied Pryor on the tour.
Two Redfield alderman, Tony Lawhon and James Smith, also spoke with Pryor and promised the municipality’s cooperation in a reopening of the lab, which employed some 120 workers at its peak. Officials said all but two still reside in Central Arkansas.
Arkansas can’t let “this intellectual capacity” go to waste, along with the only medical lab of this type in the state, Pryor told The Commercial. The facility has the potential for a wide range of uses, from medical testing to biofuel research, he added.
Carpenter said he is working with a number of potential investors with the hopes that they purchase the lab, then lease it to Consensus Biolabs. He said he is confident his firm will acquire the lab “because we are the only buyer at the table.”
The lab has research and development capability, Carpenter added, and is the only facility in the state with the ability to produce “the data the (Food and Drug Administration) looks at to determine if a drug is safe.”
He said he would like to expand the lab’s capacity to look at medical devices and become a “fully integrated” facility that could also play a major role in developing renewable fuels.
The specialty lab, constructed in 1983, is one of 10 in the country, Pryor said, adding he wants to “build on the good knowledge base here at NCTR.”
The senator said he met recently with Army personnel to discuss the future of the arsenal, adding white there was no breakthrough, he wants “a new niche something coming” to the only Army base in the state. One opportunity might involve refurbishing military equipment returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We are always looking for opportunities,” Pryor said, citing the arsenal’s “first rate leadership team. Half the battle is the Army does not realize its importance. It is ahead of schedule on (the destruction of) chemical weapons, below budget and with few problems. There have been lots of problems at other sites.
