Innovation Campus relishing its newfound momentum

Tetrad Property Group is constructing a $15.3 million building at Nebraska Innovation Campus for mixed-use space with small-and-mid-sized companies in mind.

As Nebraska Innovation Campus was preparing to open a little more than three years ago, university and research park officials asked lawmakers and regents for patience.

Speaking to the Board of Regents in September 2014, then-Chancellor Harvey Perlman said the park’s biggest obstacle would be showing an activity level capable of sparking excitement from potential partners.

“You want people to believe there is actually something there,” Perlman said at the time. “It’s hard to attract people to go out there to be pioneers when they would be isolated.”

Innovation Campus, it seems, has found that spark and begun stoking it into a fire.

Hundreds of students take classes at the Food Innovation Center each week, while the first amenity on campus -- The Mill Coffee and Bistro -- has become a destination for meetings and study sessions, and a construction crane towering over what campus officials are describing as a modern office building unlike any other in Lincoln is set to open later this year.

“It’s come together much faster than what we anticipated,” said Dan Duncan, executive director of Nebraska Innovation Campus. Read More>>