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Monday, December 1, 1997

Houston Advanced Research Center struggling to overcome supercollider bust

HOUSTON (AP) -- The supercollider was supposed to be the project that brought the Houston Advanced Research Center international recognition for helping usher in a new age of atomic experimentation.

Instead, Congress killed plans for the giant atom smasher four years ago, keeping the little-known institute in The Woodlands in relative anonymity.

"It was a gut shot," HARC President Arthur "Skip" Porter said of the government's decision to cut the $8.3 billion project. "It cost us a few million bucks and made us reconsider our mission."

After several less-than-successful ventures, the institute is still working to bring Texas scientific research to the marketplace.

Observers are divided over the institute's future, but even its loudest boosters acknowledge that HARC's history has been quiet.

"They've never had that home run," economist Ray Perryman told the Houston Chronicle.

The supercollider, a U.S. Department of Energy project that was to involve smashing subatomic particles into each other at high speeds, was the closest HARC has come to gaining national prominence.

HARC spent five years on magnet-energy research that got some of the credit when DOE selected Waxahachie, a small town near Dallas, as the site for the supercollider and its anticipated 2,500 permanent jobs. But the jubilation was short-lived. The project was axed as part of the move to cut the federal budget deficit.

HARC's slow growth -- in both staffing and funding -- has led leaders to talk with Rice and Texas A&M about joining one of the schools.

Porter downplays any concern about HARC, saying great research institutes aren't built overnight and that his only real disappointment is that he has not better communicated the importance of HARC.

HARC, founded in 1982 by entrepreneur George Mitchell, was expected to spark a high-tech revolution for Houston the way Stanford Research Institute did for the Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle Institute did for North Carolina. Mitchell donated 100 acres in The Woodlands and both start-up and yearly funding.

The idea was that the private, nonprofit HARC would allow for successful collaboration on projects too large for any one school.

"I've drilled 8,000 wells, I'm building The Woodlands, restoring Galveston," Mitchell said a few years ago. "But the most important thing I've ever undertaken is HARC. My dream is that HARC will always stand as a gateway to scientific discovery and performance."

Whatever its shortcomings, a recent report indicates that HARC is having a positive impact.

It has created 443 permanent jobs and generates $37.7 million in total expenditures within the Greater Houston economy annually, according to Perryman.

And if it has never had that great splash, HARC officials still point to accomplishments besides the luring of the illusory supercollider, including enhanced technologies to improve oil and gas exploration; laser advances that could lead to optical microscopes with X-ray resolution; a world record for the highest current through a superconducting cable.

HARC holds 24 patents and has spun off seven companies.

"You have to remember that something like HARC is not a short-term endeavor," Porter said. "They require the vision and patience to communicate to people that centers for the performing sciences are as important to a city as centers for performing arts, to survive the kind of tough times we've just been through and capitalize on the good times."