Two economic development initiatives at Louisiana Tech University are expected to create hundreds of new jobs and boost Barksdale Air Force Base and the defense sector, officials said Wednesday.

At the university’s Ruston campus, Tech Pointe II is a $15 million, 60,000-square-foot commercial office building that will join the existing, 42,000-square-foot Tech Pointe I building that opened in 2012. Both are part of the university’s master plan to turn its Enterprise Campus into a major research park for academics, technology transfer and private sector tenants.

Louisiana Tech’s private nonprofit entity, Tech Pointe II LLC, plans to raise $7.5 million in private funds for the project. It would develop, build, own and operate the structure.

The state would match those funds with an additional $7.5 million to complete the project, a news release from Louisiana Economic Development said. LED anticipates 750 jobs created at the Ruston campus over the next 10 years.

Tech Pointe II will generate over $500 million in new economic impact over the next decade along the I-20 Cyber Corridor, said Davy Norris, Louisiana Tech’s chief research and innovation officer. The final design for Tech Pointe II will be completed by December, with construction beginning in mid-2020 and completed by late 2021.

The full development of the campus is expected to take 20 years and could create up to 1,500 research and related jobs, the news release said.

The university also plans to establish a Louisiana Tech Research Institute office at the Cyber Innovation Center, located at the 3,000-acre National Cyber Research Park in Bossier City. Retired Brig. Gen. Gerald Goodfellow will lead LTRI as executive director after serving until July 2019 as the director of Strategic Plans, Programs and Requirements for the Global Strike Command headquarters at Barksdale Air Force Base.

For each of the next three years, the state plans to fund up to $1 million for $3 million or more in federal and private research funds attracted by the Louisiana Tech entity. Meanwhile LTRI will develop workforce talent to support the Air Force’s Global Strike Command, which is pursuing a proposed weapons generation facility at Barksdale as part of the nation’s nuclear modernization effort.

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