State Designates ‘Technology Corridor’

Transcript Business Editor

The Norman Transcript

It took an act of the state legislature and some promotion from economic development leaders to make it official.

Signs went up Wednesday designating an 81?2-mile stretch of Norman along Highway 9 as the "Oklahoma Technology Corridor." Although there are other pockets of technology elsewhere in Oklahoma, none other will bear that name, said Don Wood, director of the Norman Economic Development Coalition.

The state Department of Transportation anchored the tech corridor signs on Highway 9 near the U.S. Postal Service National Center for Employee Development and around McGee Drive. A four-mile section of Highway 9 between the two signs is flanked by many of Norman's high-tech companies and university and government research agencies.

Highway 9 east of I-35 passes by the new University of Oklahoma Research Campus, Yamanouchi Pharma Technologies, Hitachi Computer Products, Inc., the postal service's National Center for Employee Development and the Norman Business Park where several high-tech companies have located.

Technically, the Highway 9 tech corridor extends four miles west of I-35 to take in Space Imaging EOSAT, which in 1992 became the first satellite ground station in the U.S.

Several other technically oriented businesses and university research institutions are within two or three miles of the technology corridor.

Wood said the road designation should be a "heads-up" for companies looking to locate science, research and development operations. There are opportunities for collaboration with other research-oriented organizations, particularly the University of Oklahoma, he said.

"When you think about Oklahoma, there's not an instance in the state of this many technical companies in such close proximity," Wood said. "We wanted our brand for this unique situation.

"Area legislators, led by Rep. Bill Nations, succeeded in passing a bill designating the Oklahoma Technology Corridor during the last session of the legislature. The bill culminated about a year and a half of groundwork, Wood said.

Last summer an OU intern class developed the Oklahoma Technology Corridor Web site. The REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) class, funded by OU and the National Science Foundation, packed information about Norman's high-tech organizations onto the Web site: www.ok9tech.com. The research and technically-oriented organizations are profiled on Web site, which also has a map displaying their locations.

"California has its Silicon Valley, the East Coast has its Golden Triangle and Route 128," Wood said. Such designations "can catch on and be built on. Oklahoma's is right here in Norman."