The Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce has plans for creating a downtown technology park on the vacant government-owned land south of the Pensacola Civic Center and adjacent to IHMC’s new technology park. The downtown technology park will serve as a location for larger, more-established technology companies that want to sink roots in Pensacola. The downtown technology park also has the potential for creating as many as 1,000 high-paying jobs.
The University of West Florida’s new School of Science and Engineering will begin offering electrical and computer engineering degrees in the spring of 2009. UWF will construct a $32-million Science and Technology Building at the Pensacola campus. The Science and Technology Building will house computer science, computer information science, electrical engineering, computer engineering, mathematics and statistics, physics and software engineering. The UWF School of Science and Engineering will help to grow and develop the talent that will continue the innovative and technology-led economy of Northwest Florida.
The Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola is planning to build a downtown technology park. IHMC’s technology park will create a campus-like environment to serve the future needs of IHMC and will allow IHMC to better capitalize on their location in Downtown Pensacola. The IHMC technology park will also create a link between the Seville Historic District and the Aragon neighborhood to the east. IHMC’s new technology park will also complement the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce’s plans for a technology park that would be located adjacent to IHMC’s technology park.
Okaloosa County and Eglin AFB are currently developing the Emerald Coast Technology and Research Center. The Emerald Coast Technology and Research Center is a 98 acre development located near Eglin AFB’s west gate. The Emerald Coast Technology and Research Center is being developed under the Air Force Enhanced Use Leasing Program. The Center will reflect a campus atmosphere that creates partnerships with technology program providers for Air Force missions, the University of Florida, Okaloosa-Walton College, the University of West Florida, and various research tenants. The Emerald Coast Technology and Research Center will enhance the ability of Eglin AFB to carry out its national defense mission by creating strong relationships between public-research facilities, private-sector manufacturers, and research-based businesses.