Good luck with the budget........

 Alright, let's cut the corporate PR fluff and call this what it is: a textbook Topeka taxpayer-funded boondoggle with a fresh coat of "innovation" paint.

You had the historic Wolfe’s Camera Shop—97 years of local legacy—snapped up in 2021 by BioRealty Inc. (that California outfit via their Astra IC Partners shell) for a shiny ASTRA Innovation Center. Wet labs, coworking, the whole Plug and Play Animal Health fairy tale. GO Topeka (Molly Howey and Stephanie Moran front and center) hyped it hard. JEDO rubber-stamped $14.5 million in incentives. BioRealty grabs the three buildings for $1.15 million, and then... Shawnee County taxpayers start cutting checks. Over 40 payments totaling more than $1 million for "pre-development," asbestos, historic credits, the usual. Years of tours, phased plans, "we're almost there" updates. Construction? Never happened. Pre-leasing? Crickets. Tax credits? Fell short. By summer 2024, BioRealty ghosts the deal, lists the properties for $2.85 million (nice little markup on public sweat), and bounces. Classic: public money primes the pump, private developer walks with the upside, Topeka gets the bill and an empty promise.

Enter Innovation Center 2.0—the "pivot" nobody asked for. Same GO Topeka crew, same bioscience dreams, now in the old AT&T building at 220 SE 6th (owned lock, stock, and barrel by Aim Strategies LLC—local downtown revitalization pros behind the Cyrus Hotel, etc.). GO Topeka becomes the 10-year master lease holder, builds out labs and pitch rooms, opens sometime early 2026. Sounds efficient, right? Except the price tag. While the city's staring down a $15 million operations shortfall, GO Topeka/JEDO is reportedly gifting Aim Strategies $9.5 million in public commitments for this sequel. Not a million-dollar "rent" like the first flop—nine and a half million straight to the same circle of connected players for a project that's basically the Wolf Camera rerun in a bigger, pricier wrapper.

Same script, different address: endless delays, funding gymnastics, taxpayer dollars flowing while "strategic importance" gets invoked like a get-out-of-failure-free card. Stephanie Moran spins it as "getting labs online sooner." Molly Howey's organization keeps the wheel spinning. And Aim Strategies? They get a sweet long-term lease on a building they already own, with public money covering the heavy lifting.

This isn't economic development—it's the same insiders recycling the same failed formula, just with a higher body count on the invoice. Wolf Camera proved it doesn't work. The AT&T version? Spoiler: it won't either. Topeka's innovation district keeps "innovating" new ways to burn public cash while the real problems (budget holes, actual jobs that stick) get ignored. If history's any guide, we'll be right back here in a couple years with "Innovation Center 3.0" and another sob story about why it almost worked this time.

Straight-up corruption? Maybe not the envelope-under-the-table kind. But when the same folks keep winning contracts, the same consultants keep advising, and the same taxpayers keep footing the bill for zero results... call it what you want. Crony capitalism. Elite capture. Whatever. It's Topeka's money, and it's gone. Again.