Innovation Campus changes tack from research to business for tenants

Instead of a "research and development campus" as it was zoned, a modern business park has taken shape where "business innovation" is the name of the game and companies can "co-locate" with academic research.

Financial advisers, ticket sellers, lawyers and even the evangelical Believe church now occupy space in the North Wollongong campus, either through permanent tenancies, shared office spaces or other arrangements.

As a business park it's a beauty, with some of the city's most outstanding architecture, uncrowded spaces and numerous success stories from the iAccelerate startup business incubator. But the result is a proliferation of commercial tenants in the landmark facility that have no recognisable focus on research and development (R&D).

And it appears the Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, UOW's own flagship innovation centre on the campus, is about to be dismantled and much of its work dispersed into the university faculties.

The shift has concerned the university's main staff union, the NTEU, which worries about the effect on staff.

The Innovation Campus was founded on a promise that corporate tenants would have a significant R&D aspect "integral" to their work there.

The land had been transferred by NSW government to UOW and the Wollongong Wolves' football club's home ground Brandon Park was demolished to build the research campus.

The campus's purpose was enshrined in planning laws. The area's Development Control Plan said it was a "research and development campus" where "enterprises that carry out research and development as an integral part of their operations can be located".

While the University of Wollongong's presence in research is significant and renowned as a "powerhouse", the commercial tenants now include human resources consultants, the Komatsu mining equipment group, numerous financial advisers and private wealth companies, health care, and sales and marketing firms.

There are several law firms while the UOW law faculty is elsewhere, on the Keiraville campus.

US sales agent Tickets.com, a sales company owned by Major League baseball in the US, has an office on the "IC".

Believe church is the Illawarra branch of the C3 global network, a modern Pentecostal style of "charismatic" church with a goal of rapid expansion. It has a strong focus on donation-based fundraising and sees "speaking in other tongues" as evidence of god's work.

The church holds its Sunday sessions in the campus's Central building. While UOW said the church is not a tenant, Believe gives its address as Level 2, Central, Innovation Campus. It has been there for a significant time, renting the function centre for use every Sunday. UOW scenes feature in its marketing material.

The change has been reflected in the language UOW uses to describe its facility, with "business innovation" and "convergence" now used rather than R&D.

NTEU Wollongong branch president Fiona Probyn-Rapsey was worried the university presence on the campus would shrink.

"We are concerned that Innovation Campus has become another financial burden of the real estate kind," Professor Probyn-Rapsey said.

"It is now being managed as a real estate opportunity for commercial businesses who get to rub shoulders with researchers and be a part of campus life.

"In reality, there have been job losses and shrinking university presence on that campus - in AHSRI (Australian Health Services Research Institute) for example, and now also plans to move AIIM (Australian Institute for Innovative Materials) into the faculties where previously full time researchers are going to be expected to take on more teaching roles.

"Replacing UOW staff with commercial businesses and an evangelical church that have no research activities [would be] out of keeping with what a university is and stands for.

"At the same time, it implies that those businesses are benefiting from their association with UOW simply through renting office space.

"This is a very worrying development in the public role of a university."

The campus is not without innovation, or innovative tenants - the university's own operations there are a research "powerhouse" with numerous success stories.

Some tenants are clearly linked to innovation or research, including the Green Gravity clean energy startup which uses the "SmartSpace" co-working office on the campus.

The Australian Institute for Innovative Materials helps "transform multi-functional materials research into commercial reality". It includes the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute and the Institute for Superconducting and Electronic Materials, among other high-level research projects but its future structure is up in the air with the university's proposal to disperse the institute.

The successful iAccelerate business incubator continues to facilitate start-ups and entrepreneurs turning their ideas into commercial success.

A precinct-based microgrid was established for clean energy research in June this year, with electricity generated by 468 solar panels located on the roof of the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre powered the building, the Illawarra Flame project house, Campus East student accommodation, and street lights.

The Mercury asked the University of Wollongong about the shift from R&D to business, for commercial tenants.

A spokesman described the benefits of "co-location" but did not explain the shift from research campus to business park.

"The University of Wollongong's (UOW) Innovation Campus is fulfilling its vision to be a centre for research, innovation and development where some of Australia's leading researchers co-locate with businesses, industry and the community to tap into the University's research excellence and its pipeline of high-quality graduates," the spokesman said.

"The UOW 2020 Economic Impact Report identified that the Innovation Campus contributes $195 million to the Illawarra region every year. This includes $75 million in regional output, $43 million in household income, $53 million regional value-add and the creation of 407 local jobs.

"UOW is an anchor institution in the Illawarra, delivering enormous economic and social benefit, and the Innovation Campus is a perfect example its role in the community. This integrated ecosystem is creating jobs, fostering cutting-edge research, and driving enhanced collaboration between UOW, industry, government and the community."

He said the iAccelerate facility was successful.

"Examples include UOW's startup incubator iAccelerate, with graduates such as Hysata and Sicona now attracting international attention for their incredible work commercialising discoveries made by researchers at the Innovation Campus."

Some of the major office spaces remain empty with real estate firm Colliers now managing the leases, advertising several offices looking for tenants.

This includes the entire north side top floor of the Enterprise 1 building, a 1300 square metre space which has lain vacant since coal miner South32 left in November 2021.

"More than just a business park, the Innovation Campus is an internationally recognised and award winning precinct connected with the University of Wollongong with rare opportunities to help enhance your business," one Colliers sales pitch says.

As long as 12 years ago, as the Wollongong CBD was unpopular as a destination for high-grade office space, there were concerns the campus's research brief was not being fulfilled and it was drawing corporate tenants out of the CBD leaving buildings empty.

Some previous tenants' research credentials had been regarded as tenuous, with an NEC information technology support call centre raising questions in 2016.

South32's operations included research and innovation as an ever-evolving part of mining, but its top-floor tenancy was a head office rather than a specific research and development centre.

Development of the Innovation Campus was funded in part by a $175 million loan UOW took out in 2017, as well as a $42 million loan from 2006 which was also used for works on the UOW Keiraville campus.

Development is set to ramp up at the campus in the coming years, with plans to build a high performance and training centre in a collaboration with the St George Illawarra Dragons rugby league club.

And the giant on the horizon is the development of the UOW's long-planned Health and Wellbeing Precinct, for which a development application is being assessed.

This would be an "intergenerational university community" that would combine community health care, retirement living (to be built with retirement developer Keyton), child care and retail operations.

The Innovation Campus website says the community health facility would include a "significant focus on teaching and research activities".