A new report on Foundry Row's biotech cluster contains the kind of number that gets circulated at ribbon-cuttings for years: jobs at the neighborhood's biotech firms have roughly doubled since the last time anyone counted. But the same report also flags a shortage of trained local workers that its authors say could slow the next five years of growth.
The report, prepared by an outside economic consulting firm at the city’s request and presented to the council’s economic development committee, found that Foundry Row’s biotech and life-sciences employers now account for roughly 2,200 jobs, up from an estimated 1,050 five years ago. The growth was driven primarily by hiring at Kestrel Biologics and Ridgeline Therapeutics, the neighborhood’s two largest biotech employers, along with a handful of smaller firms that have spun out of Forge Bellwater, the Foundry Row startup incubator.
A cluster effect, not just two companies growing
Dr. Samuel Iyer, the Bellwater State University labor economist who consulted on the report, said the data shows something more durable than two companies expanding independently. “What you’re seeing now is a cluster effect,” Iyer said. “Once you have two anchor employers of real scale, you start attracting suppliers, specialty contractors, testing labs, all the smaller businesses that exist to serve biotech firms. That’s a different, more resilient kind of growth than one company hiring a lot of people.”
Mayor Renata Ibarra, who has made the biotech sector’s growth a centerpiece of her second-term economic agenda, called the report validation of the city’s decision years ago to court biotech tenants for Foundry Row rather than pursue traditional manufacturing replacements for the neighborhood’s shuttered factories. “We made a bet on this ten years ago that a lot of people thought was risky,” Ibarra said. “This report says the bet paid off in jobs, not just in ribbon-cuttings.”
Once you have two anchor employers of real scale, you start attracting suppliers, specialty contractors, testing labs, all the smaller businesses that exist to serve biotech firms.
Dr. Samuel Iyer, labor economist, Bellwater State University
The hiring pace has already started to slow
The report’s more cautionary finding, buried several pages past the headline jobs figure, is that hiring growth has slowed meaningfully over the past year, from an annual pace above 15 percent in the cluster’s early years to roughly 6 percent most recently. The report attributes the slowdown primarily to a shortage of workers trained for mid-level manufacturing and quality-control technician roles that don’t require a doctorate but do require specialized coursework Bellwater’s schools have only recently begun offering at scale.
Theresa Nakamura, executive director of the Bellwater Chamber of Commerce, said the finding matches what she has heard directly from Foundry Row employers at her office’s quarterly meetings between biotech firms and workforce-training providers. “Every single company at that table has open technician positions they can’t fill fast enough,” Nakamura said. “The story right now isn’t that the jobs aren’t there. It’s that we haven’t caught up on training people to take them.”
Council Member Luis Bettencourt, who represents Foundry Row, said the report’s job numbers arrive alongside real tension in his district over what the growth has meant for longtime residents. “I want to be careful about how we talk about this,” Bettencourt said. “Two thousand new jobs sounds great in a headline. It’s a lot more complicated when you’re the person who’s lived in Foundry Row for thirty years and can’t afford the rent increase that came with those jobs.”
Iyer’s report recommends the city expand partnerships between employers and Bellwater State’s biotech and clean-energy academic programs, which have already seen an enrollment surge, along with new technician-track offerings at the community college. He said the region’s skills gap has narrowed meaningfully over the past several years but remains the single largest constraint on further cluster growth.
- Foundry Row biotech employment: roughly 2,200 jobs, up from 1,050 five years ago
- Annual hiring growth has slowed from over 15 percent to roughly 6 percent
- Report cites a shortage of trained manufacturing and quality-control technicians
- Cluster now includes smaller suppliers and contractors beyond the two anchor firms
Ibarra said her office will use the report to push for expanded state workforce-training grants in next year’s budget cycle, framing the request as protecting an economic gain rather than chasing a new one. Iyer said the next five years will test whether Bellwater’s training pipeline can keep pace with a cluster that has, by his own report’s measure, already outgrown its early hiring pool. “The easy jobs to fill are filled,” Iyer said. “What’s left now is harder, and it’s going to take longer.”
The report also flagged the growing presence of smaller suppliers and specialty contractors serving the two anchor biotech firms, from equipment-calibration services to a laboratory-glassware supplier that relocated from a neighboring county specifically to be closer to Foundry Row customers. Nakamura said her office has begun tracking those secondary businesses separately, arguing they represent a more durable form of economic diversification than employment figures at Kestrel and Ridgeline alone. Bettencourt said he intends to press for a follow-up report next year focused specifically on whether Foundry Row’s rent increases have kept pace with, or outstripped, the wage gains the new jobs have delivered to longtime residents of his district.