Phoenix Biomedical Campus creating plenty of jobs, revenue in Valley

PHOENIX — A new survey says the Phoenix Biomedical Campus is bringing big bucks to downtown.

The report says the center, a partnership between The University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University located at Seventh Street and Van Buren Street, brought in $1.3 billion in 2013, with a lot of those funds coming from UA’s College of Medicine-Phoenix.

“Just the University of Arizona-Phoenix part of this is knocking on the door of $1 billion in direct and indirect benefit for the state of Arizona, with most of that being here in the Phoenix region,” said Paul Umbach of the Tripp Umbach research group. “We found out that that’s like two Super Bowls every year happening at the same time.”

The report said the center created over 9,300 jobs in Phoenix last year.

“And these jobs remain,” Umbach said. “They don’t go away like when an event comes or goes. They stay. We’re seeing the bathtub, if you will, of job growth every year in the biomedical health and education sector.”

The economic impact of the biomedical campus is expected to increase over the next decade.

“When you look out just 10 years, you’re looking at Phoenix Biomedical Campus having over $3 billion in economic impact,” Umbach said. “It comes out to somewhere around 1,000 jobs, direct and indirect, every year between now and 2025.”

A new cancer center is on the way, and the Phoenix Biomedical Partnership building will open in 2016. Umbach said that will bring in many additional jobs.

“The job growth will be from about 9,000 to about 22,000 jobs,” he said.

The report was commissioned by the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix and the City of Phoenix.