HCAR - Hershey Center for Applied Research. South Centrals Pennsylvania's Premier Research Park Located Adjacent to Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and College of Medicine.

Center Overview

Located adjacent to the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Penn State College of Medicine, HCAR is a day's drive from New York City and Washington DC, and is fast becoming a viable location for life sciences and high technology researchers and companies to grow and succeed in the global marketplace.

HCAR is a research park that offers life sciences and high technology companies at all phases of the business lifecycle state-of-the-art wet and dry lab facilities and office space, as well as access to capital, business support services, and shared amenities. The first building of the research park, consisting of 80,000 square feet, was completed April 27, 2007. The campus is master planned to include for up to 12 similar buildings.

HCAR is proving to be an attractive location for high technology companies for three reasons:

First, the campus is located adjacent to Penn State College of Medicine, an academic medical institution that is receiving approximately $100 million annually in research funding, thereby providing a pipeline of opportunities for collaborations and partnerships between academia and industry. In fact, although no formal relationship exists between HCAR and Penn State, the Penn State College of Medicine Department of Pharmacology and the Penn State College of Medicine Technology Development Office are the anchor tenants of Building One.

Secondly, HCAR is designed to provide very flexible, competitively priced, state-of-the-art facilities and amenities that have the ability to meet the unique needs of high technology companies. In providing wet and dry lab space as well as traditional office space, the research park is filling an unmet regional need.

Third, the South Central Pennsylvania region offers a high quality of life and a competitive cost of doing business, while still being within a day's drive of the major metropolitan areas that are of interest to high technology companies.

For these reasons, HCAR is quickly becoming an attractive location to companies and researchers who would traditionally locate in a metropolitan area, as well as to international companies that need to have a 'soft landing' to break out into the US market.

The mission of the Hershey Center for Applied Research is to:

• Provide world-class facilities and services to high technology and science-based companies to support their growth and success in the global marketplace;
• Encourage the creation of new businesses through the promotion of the transfer of technology and business skills between university and industry, and;
• Serve as a catalyst for technology-based economic development in South Central PA