BLACKSBURG -- In the early 1980s, a group of Virginia Tech administrators looked out on a cow pasture and envisioned a research park.

Across the field's grassy landscape, they imagined sleek, multistory structures. In place of grazing cows, they pictured researchers and entrepreneurs. And in their minds, they saw 120 acres transformed into a center of high-tech innovation.

At the time, those plans seemed lofty. Now, however, it appears they might not have been lofty enough.

Home to 23 buildings, more than 130 businesses and almost 2,000 highly paid employees, the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center is just a couple of years away from outgrowing its footprint.

And, while park growth has outpaced even the ambitions of its early dreamers, demand doesn't seem to be letting up.

It's time for Phase II.

Like the CRC's first phase, its second will be ambitious.

Estimated to cost $150 million over 20 years, the expansion will nearly double the acreage of the park, likely expanding its boundaries west along U.S. 460 over a 95-acre tract owned by Virginia Tech.

Ray Smoot, chief operating officer and secretary-treasurer of the Virginia Tech Foundation, said the foundation is working to acquire the land from the university.

The CRC is a for-profit, wholly owned subsidiary of the foundation, which debt-finances and builds most of the park's buildings. Of the $76.2 million put into the park, the foundation has invested $69.6 million in debt and $5.8 million in cash. An EDA grant of approximately $800,000 was also awarded to help cover infrastructure costs.

Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times

Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, near its expansion site, along U.S. 460 Bypass.

"We're now in a position where we have to either recognize that the park is nearing capacity and will not continue to grow or we have to provide for its second phase," said Smoot, who helped negotiate land acquisition for Phase I and now serves as chairman of the CRC board of directors. "If we assume the existing park will continue to grow at the running rate of one building per year, we need to be able to start building in the new phase of the park in about three years."

The alternative, Smoot noted, would be to "declare a victory," in effect passing up the opportunity to meet the demand for space from both Tech's growing research program and the private sector.

Given the success of the CRC's first phase, inaction isn't likely.

"We're seeing some snowball effect out there," Smoot said. "The more companies and university research centers that we have in the CRC, the more attractive it becomes to others to co-locate because of research interest in what companies are doing."

In addition to increasing the park's money-making potential, Phase II is expected to have a significant impact on the New River Valley economy with an influx of new businesses and employees.

Need proof? Just look at what's happened in the 22 years since the CRC was founded.

Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times

Work is under way on the Virginia Tech Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, the last and largest building to go up in the Corporate Research Center's first phase.

Boasting tenants in robotics, aerospace and computer engineering, the park is 98 percent full. Occupants range in size from one-person startups to companies with more than 100 employees and a worldwide presence. And most employee wages are well above the area average.

In his job marketing the region's business environment, Aric Bopp, executive director of the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance, said the park lends "legitimacy" to his pitch to target industries.

"It shows that companies can not just come here, but come here and grow," Bopp said.

Particularly in recent years, the CRC itself has grown at a considerable clip -- so considerable, in fact, it has taken Smoot by surprise.

"I didn't think 20 some years ago that I would be involved in planning for a second phase," he said.

But industry experts take the pace of growth as a good sign.

"They obviously came up with a highly successful model, and I think it's just natural that they would want to continue that," said Eileen Walker, program development director with the Association of University Research Parks. "In the U.S., the work that we are really excelling at is the work of research and of taking that research into new innovations. ... Knowledge workers are becoming more and more important to our economy and that's who works at research parks."

According to a 2006 association study, more than half of the 75 parks surveyed had completed a new building in the past year. Of the parks surveyed, 32.9 percent had fewer than five buildings, 30 percent had five to 10 and 27.2 percent had 11 to 25. Only three of the parks had 26 to 50 buildings; four had more than 100.

Fueled in large part by Tech's increasing emphasis on research, the attractiveness of the New River Valley and the evolution of an entrepreneurial climate, the CRC has grown building by building in direct response to demand.

"We have no desire to be ahead of demand and be worried about who's going to pay for rent," said Joe Meredith, CRC president. "That's why we really don't build a building unless we've got a real good indication of demand."

Thus far, much of the demand has come from small, university-related spinoffs.

Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times

Joe Meredith, president of Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, next to the site of the center's expansion between Tech Center Drive and U.S. 460 Bypass.

"When it [the park] was originally envisioned, they thought: We'll open it up and all these big companies -- Intel, Motorola, Microsoft -- they'll all come here to access all the technical people coming out of Virginia Tech," said Doug Juanarena, CRC tenant and member of the park's board of directors. "Well, none of that ever happened."

Instead, Juanarena said, "the profs, the graduate students and sometimes other kinds of businesspeople came here and started these little one-office opportunities, some of which have grown quite nicely."

Indeed, one of the park's key accomplishments, according to Meredith, is demonstrating "it is possible for companies that start with literally nothing to grow through all the phases of a life cycle of a company."

"It's not like someone has to move out of Blacksburg to go to the big city to be recognized by the national capital markets or venture capital or something like that," Meredith said.

In fact, several tenants have relocated to Blacksburg from other, often larger, communities -- tenants such as Intrexon.

The private, life sciences company was founded in Cincinnati but relocated to the CRC in 2005 in search of capital. It recently received $25 million in financing from New River Management, a private investment fund managed by Radford-based Third Security.

Similar relocations and startups have contributed to a park many tenants agree has now reached "a critical mass." As a result, "people find all kinds of services are in the park. People find talented people out here. They've seen success stories and they help each other in terms of business planning and advice," said Vinod Chachra, founder of the CRC's first tenant company.

It's a far cry from what the VTLS Inc. president and chief executive officer found when he first moved into the CRC in 1987. At the time, the building he occupied was surrounded by little more than open space and woods.

As much of the woods were cleared and the open space filled, Chachra said the impact has been both positive and negative.

"The positive impact, of course, is that it brought a lot of young professionals to the area and therefore there were some interactions made possible with the community that weren't possible when we were here by ourselves," he said. "Part of the negative aspect was that we were one of the larger companies here and therefore, as newer companies came in, we became an obvious place for people to recruit from."

Now, however, the park has gotten big enough that VTLS can recruit from other tenants and, increasingly, bring people in from outside.

The jobs for which VTLS and other CRC tenants recruit are often high-paying and technology-based -- a fact that is often cited as another park achievement.

According to Virginia Employment Commission labor market statistics for the third quarter of 2006, workers in physical, engineering and biological research made an average of $1,223 a week, compared with $653, the average weekly wage across all industries in Blacksburg, Christiansburg and Radford.

"As you build high-wealth companies or high-net-worth companies that pay their engineers, scientists and technicians a very good wage base, and as the average income per capita goes up, there's more money that can then be filtered back into the community," Juanarena said.

So given Phase I's successes, will Phase II be just more of the same?

Many of the park's current tenants hope not. As much as the park has accomplished, they can point to several areas for improvement.

"If you ask the people that I interface with, it's capital -- money," Juanarena said. "In a perfect world, we'd have two or three more venture capital firms."

Chachra said the park would also benefit from "specialized services," such as international banking and human resource development.

Not only would such services aid tenants, they also could help the park lure higher-profile companies -- companies able to draw increased attention to the park itself.

"One of the things that I would like to see happen in the next five to 10 years is for there to be a banner company or a premier company that finally recognizes the park and puts some sort of presence in the park," Bopp said. "We still do not have the awareness of the CRC that we would like as a marketing organization. People have heard of Research Triangle, people have heard about Silicon Valley and we're not there yet."

But while Meredith is interested in attracting recognizable companies, his main goal for Phase II is research-related.

"I think Phase I was about getting us to a critical mass of capability -- of companies, intellectual property and people and management," Meredith said. "I think Phase II is really about, how do we do the highest-quality research?"

"Phase II to me is not about numbers of buildings and number of people and square footage," he added. "It's about what's really going on there that's going to change the world and make a difference."