Study shows strength, resilience of Sandia Science & Technology Park

Sherman McCorkle walks out of Rocket Lab’s Albuquerque facility on Tuesday morning, looks out at the other businesses nearby, and reflects on what has become of this part of the city known as the Sandia Science & Technology Park.

It was roughly 30 years ago that McCorkle and a group of others, including Dan Hartley, the former vice president of laboratory development at Sandia National Laboratories, began planning for a hub that would house science- and technology-adjacent businesses on the far south end of Eubank Boulevard, outside the gates of Kirtland Air Force Base.

Fast-forward to now, and the park houses startups as well as more established businesses like defense contractor BlueHalo and Rocket Lab — a company that recently won funding from the CHIPS Act to help boost the production of advanced solar cells and panels.

Those companies, in turn, have contributed billions of dollars to the state’s economy, hired thousands of workers at high wages and continue to build on their successes in ways that prop up the park’s importance to economic development in New Mexico.

“I call them technologies for the third millennium,” says McCorkle, president and CEO of Sandia Science & Technology Park Development Corp., referring to what is being built within the park. “This is foundational technology that will be built on over the next 1,000 years.”

By the numbers

Upon entrance from Eubank and Gibson Boulevard, a BlueHalo logo appears on a building. And then it appears again and again on two more buildings in just a short drive.

The company is housed in three buildings that span 200,000 square feet at the Sandia Science & Technology Park, a business park established in 1998 as a partnership between McCorkle’s nonprofit, Sandia Science & Technology Park Development Corp., and Sandia National Laboratories.

According to a biennial study from the Mid-Region Council of Governments, the park has become a major economic driver for the state’s bustling tech and science ecosystem.

The report shows that as of June, just over 2,000 employees and 41 companies operated in 27 buildings in the 340-acre park. The park’s workforce impact in the greater region — including in Bernalillo, Sandoval, Torrance, Valencia and southern Santa Fe counties — bumps that number up to more than 4,500 jobs.

McCorkle, who also is on the board of the Kirtland Partnership Committee, said stakeholders envisioned a business park for private-sector companies driven by research from the Air Force Research Laboratory, Sandia and the Department of Defense. He said the park’s location ensured the companies would be “right outside the gate” of where that research was done, which fosters greater collaboration.

“We wouldn’t exist without this,” McCorkle said. “These are very powerful drivers.”

Mary Monson, senior manager for technology partnerships and business development at Sandia Labs, said “over the years the impact has just continued to build.”

“The impact to Sandia is very big in that our partners are in the park, our suppliers are in the park, and we even have some of our employees in the park,” she said. “Just that ability for those partners and suppliers to be that close — and we’re able to access them very easily, and they are able to access Sandia very easily — is key to our mission success at the labs.”

The report shows that collaboration between public research and private development has generated $4.4 billion in taxable consumer spending since its inception and nearly $230 million in gross receipts tax revenue for the state and city of Albuquerque.

On the employment side, wage and salary disbursements totaled $7.7 billion since 1998, and the average salary last year was $92,336. That salary is miles ahead of the average wage in the metro area, which was $59,730 last year, according to the report.

Randy Wilson, the chief financial officer for the Sandia Science & Technology Park Development Corp., said he and McCorkle were unsure of what the park would become decades later but have been impressed with its progress and the companies that are here.

“We anticipated there would be companies and jobs here,” Wilson said. “But what that would look like, I’m not sure we knew.”

Space for industry leaders

The park houses nearly four dozen businesses, including a mix of startups and more established companies.

One of those companies with a significant presence is Rocket Lab, which this year was awarded up to $24 million in CHIPS Act funding to help upgrade its equipment used to produce solar cells and panels, said Brad Clevenger, the company’s vice president of space systems.

While new in name to the park, Rocket Lab is the latest iteration of what was formerly EMCORE Corp. and, later, SolAero Technologies.

The company, in all its forms, has had a large workforce. Early on, it manufactured at its facilities micro-optical devices and the panels and cells that it still makes today.

Clevenger said the company, now Rocket Lab, no longer works on the micro-optical side. A series of sales had shifted that focus away from EMCORE’s and SolAero’s core work.

But the company in producing solar panels and cells — important components for national defense and security satellites — using some of the same equipment it used 25 years ago, said Clevenger. The CHIPS money will help upgrade that equipment.

“I think we’ll be able to significantly improve productivity and yield,” said Clevenger. “Space is an exploding business, and there’s not enough worldwide capacity for the demand that’s out there for satellite power. And so, we’ll get a significant capability boost.”

Clevenger said Rocket Lab’s business in satellite solar cells when it was still EMCORE had started from licensed intellectual property from Sandia.

He said Rocket Lab now has more than 400 employees working in Albuquerque.

“Albuquerque is a relatively low-cost labor market,” Clevenger said. “We’ve seen plenty of inflation, but not the way that L.A. or Denver or other areas have, so we can still operate here economically and remain competitive. … I would say there have been a few junctures of the company here where we had to get through rough patches of one type or another that we wouldn’t have gotten through without the support of all of the stakeholders ... up the chain.

“I think that’s been instrumental in the company’s interest in remaining here and building around our nucleus in Albuquerque.”

Formed in 2019, BlueHalo is the culmination of a collection of defense companies. The company works with the Department of Defense on systems like lasers that can counter swarms of drones. It also works in satellite communications.

BlueHalo's local vice president for operations, Steve Conyne, said around 300 employees work at its three buildings at the park. The company also has about 100 employees who work on base in different government programs.

He said the company once occupied 10 other facilities across the city but, in consolidating its operations at the park, has become more “accessible and visible to our customers.” He said the company has invested $50 million and counting in its operations at the park.

“I don’t know much about this real estate stuff, but I hear location is kind of important, and that’s why this is such a valuable chunk of land for us,” Conyne said.

That investment in construction, equipment and building maintenance across the park isn’t limited to just BlueHalo. According to the report, nearly $486 million in public and private investment has been made within the park since 1998.

McCorkle said it was “rewarding” when asked how he felt seeing the bustling activity at the park all these years later.

“For me, the greatest thing about the park is these are the best jobs in New Mexico, and they’re in the private sector,” he said. “And we need growth in the private sector so badly.”