McMaster Innovation Park officials say their first building formally opens Oct. 26 and is more than 80 per cent filled with tenants.

"I'm very pleasantly surprised that we were able to attract the number of tenants as quickly as we have," says Zach Douglas, the president and CEO of the park.

"I was quite apprehensive last fall and earlier this year when the commercial real estate market was definitely in the doldrums."

The four-storey facility at 175 Longwood Rd. S. is the former Camco main office building, which has been renovated into new office space.

Douglas says more than 280 people are currently working in the refurbished facility, and a good portion of them previously worked at the university.

The largest tenant is McMaster's Department of Family Medicine Research and Programming, which has 90 employees.

The major private-sector tenant is Trivaris Ltd., with 72 employees. The company helps commercialize research ideas. It provides financial resources, space and technology to new businesses, making profits from their success.

The Longwood Road site also houses the United Nations University's International Network on Water, Environment and Health (15 employees) as well as McMaster University's technology transfer office (20 employees). Both were previously located at the university.

Various legal and financial-management services have moved in to help fledgling companies, Douglas says.

Meanwhile, construction has begun on a 156,000-square-foot building for CANMET, to house the federal government's Materials Technology Laboratory.

The facility is being built with funds from a $60-million federal government contribution to assist the park.