In the works since 2007, BioBAT is being carved out of existing space at the 97-acre, four-million-square-foot army terminal. The Bloomberg administration has invested $12 million into the project, while State Sen. Martin Golden has arranged another $48 million of state funding. The first phase of build-out, representing 56,000 square feet of research and manufacturing space, is slated to begin later this year with completion expected in 2011.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative became the first biotech tenant at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, moving into 38,000 square feet of space there in November 2008, Apath LLC, currently a tenant at the SUNY Downstate Advanced Biotechnology Incubator in Brooklyn, has announced plans to expand and relocate to BioBAT when construction is completed.

According to the New York City Bioscience Initiative—a partnership of city and state government, academic and medical institutions and the private sector—the idea is for biotech firms to launch at the incubator and then move over to BioBAT. To that end, the City Council and the Brooklyn borough president's office have allocated about $10 million to expand the incubator from its present 24,000 square feet to a total of 50,000.

Earlier this month, the Partnership for New York City and the New York City Economic Development Corp. announced the winners of the inaugural, $1.5-million BioAccelerate NYC Prize. It's intended to address the funding gap between projects too commercial to be eligible for academic or National Institutes of Health grants but too experimental to draw private investment. The city has also implemented a series of proposal workshops for locally-based biotech companies and academic faculty.

Additionally, by the end of 2010, the Bloomberg administration plans to launch a year-long review of the bioscience industry. At the end of that review, it will release a suite of initiatives, BioNYC 2020, designed to support and grow the sector.