Introduction
In the early 1990s, Tallahassee won what looked like a jackpot: the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. With more than a billion dollars in federal investment, a dedication ceremony featuring Vice President Al Gore, and Gov. Bob Graham hailing it as a “lynchpin of economic development,” the MagLab was sold as Tallahassee’s ticket to a high-tech future.
The promise was classic government pitch: build a world-class research facility and the private sector will follow. Startups will sprout, high-wage jobs will cluster, and a sleepy capital city will become a science and innovation hub.
Three decades later, the private-sector return can be counted on one finger. Aside from oft-cited Danfoss Turbocor, there’s no visible cluster of spinoffs or manufacturing base tied to MagLab expertise. The only impact figures in circulation are FSU-affiliated: an earlier CEFA study estimated about $90 million a year in economic output for the Tallahassee MSA; newer FSU/CEFA materials scale that to ~$221 million in Tallahassee and ~$325 million statewide, numbers subsequently echoed in Board of Trustees decks and congressional letters. These are input-output accounting results built largely on university payroll and procurement, not independent evidence of new enterprise formation.
This disconnect between the hype and the reality is exactly why Red Tape Florida exists. Too often, bureaucrats and institutions oversell projects, pocket the accolades, and move on — while taxpayers and communities are left wondering where the promised growth went. If the MagLab had landed in Austin, Raleigh, or Nashville, would it have been wasted potential or a genuine catalyst? Tallahassee’s record speaks for itself.
The MagLab is an incredible scientific asset. And there are hopeful signs, including strong research performance and the return in 2026 of an important magnetics conference to Tallahassee.
But as an economic engine, it’s a cautionary tale of bureaucratic inefficiency and missed opportunity. Over the next several installments, Red Tape Florida will dig into how this happened, what lessons can be learned, and what it will take to finally turn an expensive, underperforming government project into the spark of private-sector growth it was supposed to be.
Part 1: Los Alamos vs. Tallahassee — A Tale of Two Lab Towns
To understand what’s missing in Tallahassee, consider Los Alamos, New Mexico — home to another National Science Foundation-supported lab: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The contrast is striking.
LANL has been a magnet for defense tech firms, manufacturing contractors, and federally funded spinoffs. More than 600 companies are part of the regional contractor network. The lab directly or indirectly supports over 25,000 jobs in the state — many in the private sector.
Meanwhile in Tallahassee, the MagLab supports fewer than 500 jobs — most of them public university employees. There is no comparable cluster of firms, no surge of startups, no downstream manufacturing ecosystem.
Why the difference?
First, to be fair, Los Alamos and Tallahassee are not perfect analogs. LANL is a massive national security lab with a multibillion-dollar budget and a mission tied directly to federal defense contracting. The MagLab is smaller, academically focused, and funded by the National Science Foundation.
But that doesn’t excuse the failure to build any real ecosystem around a world-class research facility. Other communities have done far more with less.
Take for example the Sandia Science & Technology Park in Albuquerque — 44 companies/organizations, 2,018 on-site employees (July 2025), nearly $500M cumulative public+private investment and 25-year impacts include $7.7B in wages and 6,500+ jobs tied to park companies
LANL’s operator, Triad National Security LLC, actively recruits corporate partnerships and administers grants to private companies. In contrast, the MagLab is operated by a public university and has focused primarily on academic research — not economic development. The new regime in Wescott has promised more results in this area. So far, evidence is hard to find.
In Los Alamos, the lab is an anchor for a private-sector ecosystem. In Tallahassee, it’s a silo.
Basically, it boils down to leadership and collaboration.
Coming next: The missing middle – why Tallahassee’s ecosystem never formed.