Winston-Salem, NC, Mayor Allen Joines is expecting company next Wednesday — namely his counterparts from 20 other North Carolina cities with sizeable numbers of life science companies.

The mayors will meet on July 29 at Piedmont Triad Research Park within his city to begin crafting a public policy agenda for growing their biotechnology and pharmaceutical clusters, and thus finally weaning their economies away from the manufacturing and financial services sectors that have shed tens of thousands of jobs since the early 1990s. Speaker set to address the group include North Carolina Lt.Gov. Walter Dalton; Anthony Atala, the director of the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine; and Sam Taylor, the president of NCBIO, the North Carolina affiliate of the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

Joines has said publicly that the initiative could create 30,000 biotech and biopharma jobs in Winston-Salem alone. That's an exponential increase from the 1,100 such jobs now based in the city by some 60 life sciences employers. Statewide, the biotech industry consists of 520 employers totaling some 57,000 employees, according to the state-funded North Carolina Biotechnology Center. When indirect activity is accounted for, the state biotech industry center accounts for 180,000 jobs and $45.8 billion in spending.

The biotech growth plan is among priorities Joines has said he will pursue during his all-but-certain third term starting next year. Joines, a Democrat, will run unopposed in November when he goes before voters seeking a third four-year term.

Joines was first elected mayor in 2001, and since then has credited his administration with persuading 30 companies to relocate to or expand in Winston-Salem, resulting in more than 6,000 new jobs.

But Winston-Salem's unemployment rate has doubled over the past year, to 10.5 percent as of latest-available May '09 metropolitan area figures released June 30 by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 5.4 percent in May 2008. The number of people without work swelled during that period to 25,100 from 12,900 people.

"The world economy is different now and North Carolina cities are competing with communities across the country and the world for the new jobs of the future," Joines, who chairs the state Economic Development Board, said in a statement announcing the meeting.

Winston-Salem's biotech sector is not immune from the downturn, judging from the Piedmont Triad Research Park's recent layoff of Bill Dean, its director and head of its recruitment operation, as well as three support staffers [BRN, June 26]. The park also held off on a redevelopment plan it said it is still pursuing with a different developer, Wexford Science+Technology, after initial partner Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse of Baltimore pulled out, citing the ongoing economic upheaval.

The park still has plans for a full build-out of its 230 acres projected to generate more than 27,000 new jobs over the next 25 to 30 years, as well as generate $1.6 billion in activity, according to Economics Research Associates of Washington, DC, a consultant for research park manager Wake Forest University Health Services.

Winston-Salem is also home to Forsyth Technical Community College, whose largest-in-the-state biotechnology program has graduated 108 students since the first class earned its degrees in 2004 — including 20 who graduated in the 2008-09 school year, according to Sharon (Shari) Covitz, the school's vice president for institutional advancement and executive director of the Foundation of Forsyth Tech.

Covitz told BioRegion News this week that Forsyth Tech's "Momentum" capital campaign is finishing up its effort to raise $13 million needed for construction of a Center for Emerging Technologies building within Piedmont Triad Research Park that will house the community college's biotechnology, nanotechnology, digital design, small business, and corporate training programs.