CHAPEL HILL -- Matthew Redinbo would love to be one of the first tenants in UNC's Innovation Center. And if all goes well, he hopes not to be there for too long.

The Innovation Center would be the first building at Carolina North, the new research campus the university has been planning for more than a decade. It would be a business incubator, a place where discoveries made in UNC laboratories could be spun off and made useful in the real world.

Redinbo is a UNC chemist whose work on resistant strains of bacteria led to the founding of his company, Exigent Pharmaceuticals, last year. Now he needs space to grow the company and continue his research.

"My job as a professor is to teach and conduct basic research and train graduate students," Redinbo said. "But everything related to developing this technology is outside of that. So it provides a separate way of advancing these discoveries."

UNC officials had hoped to start building the Innovation Center next year, but the private firm developing the project -- the California-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. -- has put it and others like it on hold due to the lagging economy. The university still expects to build it eventually.

A successful Innovation Center bustling with start-up companies would likely have a snowball effect, where researchers intrigued by the idea of spinning off their research would be encouraged by others' success and want to follow suit, Redinbo said. Ideally, his company wouldn't be a tenant there for too long. After all, a successful company would become too large for its quarters at Carolina North.

"Once you're successful, you vacate it and let another fledgling company occupy that space," he said.

Universities across the country have been building such campuses and centers for years -- like N.C. State's Centennial Campus -- to rave reviews. For Redinbo, the proximity to campus is hugely attractive.

"If you put the Innovation Center at a site in Research Triangle Park, it wouldn't be nearly as successful," he said.

UNC officials say they don't know when construction might start on the center. They say the delay actually works to the advantage of the town and university in that it will allow the town to approve overall development guidelines for Carolina North before deciding on the Innovation Center plans. Prior to the delay, UNC had asked the town to approve it before the broader Carolina North guidelines would be in place.

Once built, the Innovation Center, with its tall, glass atrium rising high over Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, will make a statement.

"It's going to be a special building that sets the tone for Carolina North," said Roger Perry, chairman of UNC's Board of Trustees. "It will be a visionary building for a visionary campus."

The center will do what officials at UNC have trumpeted for years: Offer a setting where scientists can find real-world uses for laboratory research.

The building will have 80,745 square feet on three levels. Much of it will be flexible office space with some science laboratories built in. It will have 214 parking spaces on 8 acres, one small piece of the 970-acre Horace Williams land tract.

It will sit at the corner of MLK and Municipal Drive and is designed to catch the eye with its atrium and solar panels on the roof. Both features are on display by design, an attempt by the university to emphasize its commitment to sustainability and environmentally friendly design.

But the glassed entranceway brings with it some symbolism as well, said Anna Wu, university architect and director of facilities planning.

"It's welcoming," she said. "The public space will be open and visible, and you can sort of see what's happening inside."

WHAT'S NEXT

The Town Council is considering UNC's request for a special-use permit for the Innovation Center. The council will consider a resolution Monday night to continue the public hearing to Jan. 26, 2009, at the university's request. Monday's meeting begins at 7 p.m. in Chapel Hill Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.