This article appeared in the July 6, 2011 edition of the Wake Forest Gazette. It is being reprinted because the Wireless Research Center of North Carolina is now planning a North Carolina Digital Workforce Hub at the former DuBois School campus in Wake Forest. The Center is asking for both Wake Forest and Wake County funding to start the innovative hub which will educate a local workforce, create jobs, stimulate economic growth and connect unserved areas to high-speed broadband.
An innovative economic development catalyst with similarities to the creation of the Research Triangle Park in the 1950s is taking shape in an ordinary office building off Rogers Road in Wake Forest.
It is the Wireless Research Center of North Carolina, the vision of one talented man and his colleagues, and a joint venture between the Town of Wake Forest and the Wake Forest Area Chamber of Commerce.
If it does successfully raise the necessary capital funds from grants or private sources, within the next five years it could become a national destination for antenna and wireless technology research and development for governments, the telecommunications industry, medical devices, defense contractors and university researchers.
And the center could tap into the phenomenal growth of wireless devices, from phones that start your car to pacemakers that alert your doctor when your heart begins beating irregularly. Currently there are three wireless devices for every one of the 6.96 billion people on earth; by 2015 that ratio could be five to one.
The Wireless Center is Gerard Hayes’ dream and passion, and part of that dream is making it possible for the wireless/antenna experts who worked for Sony Ericsson in the Research Triangle to continue to live in the area – actually he is pretty specific it should be Wake Forest – and work here. Hayes and his wife, Elizabeth, moved here in 1994 and are raising their two sons here.
“I’m very attached to Wake Forest. I’m very passionate about it,” Hayes said Tuesday during an interview with the local press that included Mayor Vivian Jones; Rodney Dixon, the operations and security manager and only other employee; and Chris Hare, like Hayes and Dixon a former Sony Ericsson employee who is helping with the center.
It is sad when the only time you see your neighbors is at the fireworks every year because your business keeps you on planes and away from home five days a week, Hare said. His firm, The nTeTe Group, provides wireless strategy consulting to clients from Singapore to Sweden and before that he was head of technology incubation at Sony Ericsson.
“You may live here but you don’t work here. This is a very bold and focused effort to create a technology hub as well as a residential hub,” Hare said.
“There is a skill set here that is rare and the fact that the town is supporting people who have this capability is the reason the center can do this.”
What “this” is will be state-of-the-art test equipment for antennas and wireless devices which all must meet U.S. standards and must be tested in the United States to be certified for sale here.
In addition, Hayes and the others at the center will offer consulting when a device does not perform as planned – and they will do it for a fee without asking for any royalties or a share in the intellectual property.
“When we say that, their eyes have lit up,” Hare said. Most test centers are either at universities or are for-profit businesses and insist on sharing; because the Wireless Center is nonprofit it does not need to ask for the royalties though it will ask to be recognized on patents.
By the end of this month the Wireless Center should be partly operational. Hayes and Dixon have almost finished rebuilding the first test chamber, a metal rectangle 16 feet long, 8 feet wide and 10 feet high completely lined with foot-long foam pyramids. It is an anechoic chamber, meaning there is no echo and there is no outside wireless reception inside the chamber. It will provide full antenna measurement.
“Enough companies have already said we could use it X number of hours a month or a week that without even working very hard we have filled up one shift,” Jones said.
That first chamber is a small one, and Hayes and Dixon plan to install one more as well as two large circular chambers within the next two years. Those large chambers will, among other applications, test the amount of radio frequency exposure the human body absorbs. There are national and international standards for that absorption. Hayes said he and Dixon spent eight years working together, measuring that assessment and working on improving the standards.
The chambers are from the Sony Ericsson labs that are being dismantled now that the company has closed the RTP facility. Hayes and Dixon have room to rebuild them because their office suite was renovated to suit the needs of 3Phoenix, the engineering firm new to Wake Forest which is fabricating communication masts for a class of U.S. Navy submarines. The company moved to a new building last year.
The center is already benefiting from the proximity of talented engineers, scientists and interested people. They have loaned the center several pieces of test equipment including a Thermatron donated by a local ham radio operator. It looks like a large microwave and it can simulate temperatures across the globe, from Antarctica to the Sahara.
“The key to the whole project is that one of the top fifteen to twenty people in the world in this technology is sitting at this table, Mr. Hayes,” Jones said. “We are very fortunate to have him.
During his career at first Lockheed, moving to Sony in 1993, then becoming part of the joint Sony Ericsson in 2001, Hayes says he has received about 64 or 65 patents either as part of a group or individually. “That is exciting,” he agreed, and he has a couple of patents pending from work with N.C. State.
Although he liked Sony Ericsson – “It is a very good company” – and was happy working with like-minded coworkers, Hayes said he left in 2008 before the restructuring and layoffs prompted by the economic downturn. He is still working on his Ph.D. but in that time frame his advisor at N.C. State moved to the University of Utah. “The skill set for antennas was no longer at N.C. State,” Hayes said. He went to work for a start-up company and found “We were driving to Virginia or Indiana to get something tested.” That led to his idea for the nonprofit testing center.
“I pitched this project to the start-up,” Hayes said, but a nonprofit project did not mix well with a for-profit company so he took an unpaid leave of absence and began talking to people in town and in the industry. “It was a life choice. This is my passion. I’ve not met anyone who’s said it’s a bad idea.
“We met with the mayor and Marla (Akridge, president of the Wake Forest Area Chamber of Commerce), Stephen Barrington (who was then working as the town’s economic developer), and Mark (Williams, the town manager).
“The stars kind of aligned. I didn’t know [then] about 3Phoenix and the defense technology cluster,” Hayes said. Akridge is promoting the cluster as a part of the town’s economic development strategies. And, Hayes said, the town commissioners have been very supportive also.
The Wireless Research Center was begun in January of 2010 with a $300,000 grant from the town to cover operating expenses for the first six months. That money has been stretched out, Hayes said. In June of this year the town commissioners approved a $100,000 line of credit for operating expenses. The grant does not need to be repaid; the money used in the line of credit will be repaid.
The money comes from the $2.2 million the now disbanded Industrial Development Commission gave to the town after selling the former Parker-Hannifin (once Schrader) property to Wake Forest developer Jim Adams. The town commissioners have renamed the separate bank account as the Futures Fund to be used to encourage economic development in town.
When operational, the center will offer specialized facilities that are not available anywhere else in North Carolina. Fly-in and drive-in users will help the local hotels and restaurants, Dixon noted. About 14 companies in the state and region have indicated interest and some will use the facility this summer.
It should attract companies who need those facilities to locate nearby, and Hayes and the others said one company is seriously considering moving here.
It will benefit the nearby universities and their researchers in the field, providing ready access to test labs, making them more competitive when seeking government and commercial grants for research in the wireless/antenna technology field.
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4 Responses
Require their first loan to be paid off before they get another dime of taxpayer money. The only people benefitting from this private company are the owner who used that money (still owes the town almost a million dollars) to buy a fancy house in the historic district, and the Mayor who uses the false narrative that this is some sort of economic boon for TOWF. No company is moving here and hiring large numbers of people as a result of this one private company funded entirely by taxpayers.
It is not taxpayer money. It is PRIVATE money given to the town by a privately held group with the town tasked to use it for economic development. The money does not belong to the taxpayers and never has.
I have seen nothing yet that indicates what this investment has yielded in its first 10 years, whatever the measurements. Jobs? Efficiencies? Is this investment worthwhile?
Over 60 companies have come out of the wireless center with countless others using it for research assistance and using the only Satimo Chamber on the east coast between Ohio State and Georgia tech. Because it is a non-profit and not a university which has to allow foreign nationals access, defense contractors LOVE it.
It has created jobs for people who live here locally and spend their income in local establishments. In addition, they give back to the community with providing educational opportunities for students in the area while also providing internships for local high school students. When 3Phoenix was using it for some Department of Defense work they were doing, they had 6 interns at one time, all from Wake Forest High Schools, some of whom now actually work there.
So yes, there are significant benefits for the town in tax base, disposable income and having jobs here in Wake Forest.