Board of County Supervisors chairman Corey Stewart (R) gave an enthused endorsement to a new idea that that he and others discussed during a Monday meeting with the county's Economic Development Task Force, which consists elected officials and staffers from the county, George Mason University representatives, developers and private business leaders.

The proposal calls for the county and George Mason officials to create together a science park in the greater vicinity of the GMU-Manassas campus along with a town center.

"If it works, if the 10 or 11 acres we have dedicated to this works, we can expand it to Innovation," said Stewart.

At this point, the county is making a full press for science-related businesses to locate at Innovation. Stewart said the county and university have not really worked "in close coordination with each other" on past economic development projects. Now, the idea is to combine their "resources" and "reach" to attract businesses.

According to a draft report prepared by county and GMU staffers presented to the task force Monday afternoon, the science park "would include the planning, design, construction and administration of life science facilities and services as soon as practicable. The Innovation Science Park’s plan would encourage the involvement of private sector partners to enhance the profit potential for the owners of the park and its tenants. Specific life science activities would be designed to encourage tenant collaboration, work force development and special educational activities such as the BioBonanza and the Aspiring Scientist programs."

According to Stewart, "The job of the county, and frankly the university, is to create the atmosphere that is attractive to business. It is the job of business to create jobs." He later added that "what the county can do is lay the fertile ground for those jobs. ... We're literally creating the ground for (businesses) to come and invest."

One of the goals of the partnership between the county and GMU at the science park is to "secure" wet lab space, an economic development office, a bioscience incubator facility, non-university life science tenant space, a recruitment incentive for new faculty and students, accelerated research grants, and increased life science attractions and overhead income to GMU.

A board of directors, made up of "equal members" from the university and county, would run the park and be in charge of creating an annual budget. George Mason officials would run the academic, policy and financial program that directly relate to the school. The board of directors would be in charge of everything else.

The Innovation Owners Association, which is basically like a homeowners association (HOA) only for Innovation business owners, "could be expanded" to include the county and GMU, according to the draft report. Despite bordering Innovation, the university is not part of that conglomerate.

"We want to be pre-positioned so that Innovation is at the top of the list for investment," said Stewart, mentioning that "any science-based company that wants to build a facility to expand their business" could do so at Innovation.

County spokesman Jason Grant, who previously served as communications manager for the economic development department, said that "I think one of the weaknesses that's pointed out, when you talk about Innovation specifically, (is) there's no clear sense of presence there. There's no unified vision of what this place would be ... you kind of drive by and you may not know there's this place called Innovation."

Grant said there is call for "greater presence" at Innovation that would include not only a town center where business employees could eat, shop and otherwise congregate, but more signs too.

"It's got to be the private sector delivering product," said Grant. He added, "what we need is an ability to have wetlab space that people can lease as they grow" because Northern Virginia as a region is "lacking" such space.

This all comes in the month after Northrop Grumman announced it would be relocating its headquarters from Los Angeles to the Falls Chuch-Fairfax-Arlington area. The county showed interest in the headquarters, but it did not have a standing 10-to-12-story high rises available for leasing and was as close to the Pentagon, Northrop's top client, as the other jursidictions.

"We knew all along that the idea was that they were going to be beltway centric," said Grant.

However, just because Northrop officials did not choose Prince William does not mean the county loses out, said the spokesman.

"There's value as a region," said Grant. "When you look at that, we have an economic engine that's dynamic, and so to have another headquarter in the region is a benefit."

Smaller companies have chosen Prince William in the last year to either plant their headquarters or establish multi-million dollar facilities. The United Mine Workers of America recently made a $5.7 million investment into a Quantico facility that included the lease, building out an office and company equipment. The company brought in 38 jobs too.

Beside life-sciences at Innovation, the McLean-based Power Loft data center company opened a $120 million, 225,000-square foot facility in March. According to the company Web site, "The facility was built with a two-floor design that physically separates the server rooms from the power and cooling infrastructure, allowing clients to run power densities of up to 300 watts a square foot in the equipment space."

Grant explained that the county could accommodate Power Loft's needs because the county provided "cost-savings for the company." He cited a specific subset the county's business property tax of $1.25 per $100 of assessed value, which has stayed consistent since the late 1990s, that applies applies to computer equipment. That subset includes computer equipment and its "aggressive" deprecation value, Grant said, which means companies pay fewer taxes on computer equipment over time.

What this means locally is that western Prince William residents can expect the county to be focusing its Innovation development efforts on the life-sciences and data-storage industries while defense contractors like Northrop Grumman are more likely to land elsewhere in Northern Virginia.

"I'm pretty excited about this," said Stewart, particularly referring to the science park. "It's an innovative thing."