Nation's largest biotech will call Sorrento Valley home

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published June 11, 2006 at 9:00 PM PDT

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders says the city is working to become more business friendly in an increasingly competitive business environment. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The city of San Diego is ramping up incentives to prevent businesses from moving elsewhere. As a result, Cardinal Health, a high tech biotech company with 1,600 employees, plans to build the county's largest biotech industry facility in Sorrento valley.

Mayor Jerry Sanders says the city's Business Expansion, Attraction and Retention team, otherwise known as the Bear Team, worked had to get the company what it wanted.

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Sanders: "I don't think it's a mystery to anyone in San Diego, we've not been real good at expediting services for companies and I think the Bear Team did an incredible job. We did clear away the red tape."

According to city officials, Cardinal Health was given about 100 thousand dollars in fee and tax credits, but will generate many times that amount in revenues for the city each year. Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.