Just days after his departure as economic development chief, Larry Pelton says Palm Beach County is scaring away the biotech firms it seeks to attract. Pelton stepped aside Jan. 1 after 15 years of brokering corporate expansions and relocations as president of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County. While he is credited with shepherding Scripps Research Institute into Palm Beach County, he also became a lightning rod for the issues county commissioners, the press and the public took with the publicly bankrolled project. The 364,000-square-foot Scripps facility is being seeded with more than $500 million in county and state money. But the deal once lauded as a major coup for the county and state has been broadly criticized for the way it was handled. Despite the success of snagging Scripps, the greater plan to spur a major biotechnology cluster could fail, Pelton said. Out-of-state biomedical and other technology companies are interested in following Scripps into the county, but they aren’t interested in going through the same political ringer Scripps is being squeezed through.
