Innovation Park and the Leon County Research and Development Authority in Tallahassee, Florida

Innovation Park is a 208-acre research and development park in southwest Tallahassee, governed by the Leon County Research and Development Authority and anchored by the National MagLab.

The park describes itself as North Florida's premier research and development park, with more than 1 million square feet of space in 17 buildings housing over 30 organizations, from university research facilities to specialty manufacturing companies and state and federal government research spaces. The grounds have rolling hills, live oaks and spring-fed lakes, and the park sits near Florida State University, Florida A&M University, the state capitol and Tallahassee International Airport.

It is not a private office park. The authority's mission, in collaboration with local government, FSU, FAMU and Tallahassee State College, is to foster the startup, growth and attraction of private companies that create high-wage jobs. Organizations in the park must align with or support the mission of promoting the region's research and development assets and creating high-wage jobs in Leon County and the region.

Location explains a lot. The City of Tallahassee airport page says Tallahassee International Airport is only three miles from Innovation Park, and the authority itself lists its office at 1729 W Paul Dirac Drive, Suite 219, phone 850-575-0343, on its authority page.

It is a Leon County public body corporate created under chapter 78-402, Laws of Florida, whose charter was filed with the Secretary of State on October 24, 1978.

According to the authority page, that 1978 law created the Florida Research and Development Commission and provided for five-member research and development authorities. On July 1, 1979, chapter 79-101 created Part V of Chapter 159, Florida Statutes, expanding the powers of authorities to finance projects, and on December 16, 1980 the Commission adopted Ordinance 80-68, confirming the Leon County authority under the new law. The authority's purpose is to promote scientific research and development affiliated with state-based, accredited institutions of higher education, and to foster economic development and broaden the economic base of Leon County.

State law frames the arrangement for Leon County. Under section 159.702, a research and development authority is one of the public corporations created under sections 159.701 through 159.7095, and a project means a capital project comprising a research and development park. Under section 159.704, an authority petitions the Board of Governors of the State University System for designation, with a statement of affiliation with an institution of higher learning and a minimum financial commitment of $50,000 in liquid assets.

The authority runs like a small public agency in Tallahassee, with written policies on purchasing, records retention, investment and ethics, and it lists Florida Statutes chapters 112, 119, 159 Part V, 189 and 286, covering public officers, public records, special districts and public business. Leon County Commission Resolution R22-10 sets out the composition of and appointments to its board.

Innovation Park opened for business in 1982, and its turning point came in 1994, when the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory was dedicated there.

The park history says its first tenant, the Northwest Regional Data Center, a data provider for educational and governmental communities in Florida, is still a park tenant. In the 1990s Florida State University, with the University of Florida and Los Alamos National Laboratory, won the bid to house the MagLab, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the State of Florida. Since its arrival the park has grown into a hub for magnetics, aero-propulsion, materials, energy, health and life sciences, and it is home to 13 Centers of Excellence.

Private industry followed the magnets. The park says Danfoss Turbocor, a maker of oil-free centrifugal compressors, moved to Tallahassee from Montreal, Canada in 2006. The projects page says the company built a 22,000 square foot Application Development Center that opened in 2017 and then completed a new 44,000 square foot facility adding 120 jobs, including research and development positions in advanced manufacturing. The City of Tallahassee gives a different milestone: it says Danfoss Turbocor chose Tallahassee as its North American headquarters in 2011 and expanded its Tallahassee operations in 2024.

The authority built a 40,000 square foot hard science incubator, first called North Florida Innovation Labs and now FSU's IGNITE Tallahassee.

The projects page says construction is complete and that the building offers wet labs, dry labs, a tissue and bio-culture room, fabrication and prototype spaces, 20+ offices and coworking space, capable of supporting over 100 early stage and growing tech companies. FSU News announced the launch of IGNITE Tallahassee in September 2025 as a 40,000-square-foot startup incubator in Innovation Park, run in partnership with the Leon County Research and Development Authority, with more than 30 private and shared labs, over 20 private offices and a dozen meeting rooms.

FSU celebrated the grand opening during the third annual FSU Discovery Days in October 2025, and Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey welcomed attendees and sat on the first panel discussion.

Most tenants are university research centers, led by the MagLab, the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and FSU's aero-propulsion and power systems centers.

The projects page says FSU's Interdisciplinary Research and Commercialization Building, about 115,000 square feet at Levy Avenue and Engineering Way, was completed in spring 2025 for disciplines including biomedical engineering, chemistry, chemical engineering, condensed matter physics and device prototyping, and will add capacity in quantum science. FSU's Center for Advanced Power Systems is adding a 6,400 square foot power electronics space with a high voltage room inside a Faraday cage, and is taking space on the third floor of FSU Foundation Building A.

Wind tunnels are part of the mix. The Florida Center for Advanced Aero-Propulsion, an FSU center at 2003 Levy Ave in Tallahassee, lists anechoic, polysonic and subsonic wind tunnels, the polysonic tunnel able to run tests from Mach 0.2 to 5.0.

Engineering is getting the largest new building. FSU News reported in July 2026 that the 2026-27 state budget, signed June 29, included $91.98 million for Building C of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, bringing state funding to approximately $152 million across three budget cycles for a roughly 164,000-square-foot building on the college's Innovation Park campus. The joint college enrolls more than 3,700 students from FAMU and FSU, and its last major facility opened in 1998.

Innovation Park's own pages give different size figures, from 17 buildings and 1 million square feet to over 19 buildings and 1.4 million square feet.

All three pages are official, so the figures are shown as published rather than reconciled. The home page also mentions an upcoming downtown-to-park road and 150,000 square feet of space across two new tech-focused buildings for startup incubation and commercialization.

That road is a Blueprint project. The Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency lists the Airport Gateway, which creates an east-west corridor across Lake Bradford Road to connect Florida A&M University, FSU, Innovation Park and the airport to the urban core of Tallahassee.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the Innovation Park About, home, authority and projects pages, Florida Statutes sections 159.702 and 159.704, three FSU News releases, the FCAAP site, the Blueprint home page and the City of Tallahassee airport cargo page.