In a move that will enhance the Mobile region’s health care and economy, the University of South Alabama has secured $12 million in state economic development funds toward its Cancer Research Institute.

The state funds come from a pool established in 2000 by a constitutional amendment and earmarked specifically for economic development. The money represents a share of Alabama’s natural gas royalties from Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

USA now has enough money raised to begin the three-story, 102,000-square-foot building on the Cancer Research Institute site near

Knollwood Hospital in west Mobile. USA officials expect to break ground on the $30 million project in the next six months and move in by 2005.

USA President Gordon Moulton credited Gov. Bob Riley for helping to secure the funding.

“Securing this economic development funding is an important milestone in the development of the USA Cancer Research Institute. It will enable us to move forward rapidly with our building plans, giving a home to the many scientists and health care professionals who will make up our Cancer Institute,” Moulton said.

“We thank Gov. Riley for his support and his keen understanding of how the USA Cancer Research Institute will improve both the health care and the economic climate in the Mobile region.”

Moulton expects the Institute to create 700 jobs for citizens

of all educational levels, with an economic impact of $1 billion expected in the first decade. It will stimulate the growth of a strong regional economy built on biomedicine and biotechnology.

Riley says the Cancer Research Institute is a vital way to secure top-notch health care for residents of the Gulf Coast, as well as provide a stable, vibrant economic-development base for the future.

“We have always had the opinion in

Alabama that if you want economic development you have to go out and literally buy it from these foreign countries,” Riley said. “I think what we need to do is make those kind of economic investments in things like the University of South Alabama. It serves the geographic area where you need that kind of research center and treatment center.”

He said Cancer Research Center will create steady, sustainable growth for the Gulf Coast.

“You help the citizens, you have economic development, and you also create a job that is not going to have to compete with Mexico, Honduras and China,” Riley said.

To develop and build the Cancer Research Institute, USA leaders developed a five-year budget of more than $65 million in federal funds, private contracts and grants, tobacco settlement money, patient treatment revenues, state economic development funds, and endowment funds.