A marriage of academics and industry — that’s the promise of Aggie Square, a complex of new buildings along Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento’s Oak Park neighborhood.
The innovation district had cost more than $1 billion to build. It’s now up and running, with new lab space and student housing.
Aggie Square opened last May, just two blocks from the UC Davis Medical Center.
“It’s amazing. We have state-of-the-art machines and amazing personnel working in the labs here,” said UC Davis graduate student Owne Bosley.
Bosley is an engineering grad student, but he spends most of his time working with hospital staff on high-tech medical research.
“My group is working on a way to simulate hemodynamics and small vasculature of the brain,” he said.
It’s just one example of the collaboration at Aggie Square between scientists, students, private companies, and angel investors.
“It’s a really porous kind of vibrant place where all of these different stakeholders can come together,” said Monique Brown of Wexford Science and Technology.
Aggie Square includes a tech foundry where 3-D parts can be manufactured.
“When they’re coming up with these new novel ideas and they need something custom-made for their research, they’ll come to us,” said Vanessa Quiroz, an engineer within the tech foundry.
One of the first tech companies to move in is IntelliVasc, which designs cardiovascular monitoring devices.
“There is a convergence of talent that for us was really important,” IntelliVasc founder Andrew Ortega-Verdaguer said.
UC Davis is taking up about 60% of the campus, but there’s still empty commercial lab and office space that remains unleased.
“I think that it is living up to its promise, but this is a long-term thing,” said Jay Schenirer, a partner at Capital Impact and a former Sacramento city councilmember.
There had been some initial concerns that Aggie Square would drive up housing prices in the surrounding Oak Park neighborhood.
The project includes nearly 200 new apartments with priority given to students, and $10 million is being spent to prevent gentrification.
“In order to keep housing affordable and create more inventory, having this in the district was really important from a community standpoint,” Brown said.
It’s a billion-dollar investment that supporters say is designing life-saving technology while building up Sacramento’s high-tech economy.
“It’s pretty amazing to see private industry interact with the university,” Bosley said.
Aggie Square has also become a community gathering spot and has hosted more than 400 events in its first year.