WEST LAFAYETTE – About the time drawings surfaced this week for a master plan of what might go into the Discovery Park District, Purdue’s hope for more than $1 billion in “work-live-play” redevelopment on 400 acres on the western fringes of campus, university trustees were extending President Mitch Daniels’ contract into a year-to-year perpetuity.
Asked about what he’d have on his plate beyond 2020, when his current contract ends, Daniels tossed the budding west campus plans, built on the promise of Purdue and West Lafayette’s $120 million remaking of State Street, into the mix.
“I see Greater Lafayette as a major high-tech engine for Indiana and high-tech job center, really, in the country, if we can make that successful,” Daniels said. “We just need to get going.”
On Thursday, Purdue is expected to announce the first industrial piece of Discovery Park District, as Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, a Pullman, Washington, firm founded by a Purdue graduate, plans to build a 100,000-square-foot facility for electric power research.
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The facility, called SEL Purdue and planned for the northwest corner of State Street and U.S. 231, would come with up to 300 jobs, half of which would be what the company describes as high-tech engineering positions.