Honolulu-based Biotech Research Center LLC was awarded $11 million worth of tax credits to help attract financing for the estimated $150 million project.

Biotech Research was one of 41 organizations selected by the U.S. Treasury Department's New Market Tax Credit program to receive the credits intended to foster economic development in low-income communities.

The award is technically a $28 million "allocation" that allows investors who spend $28 million financing the project to claim a 39 percent, or $11 million, federal tax credit on their investment.

The award amount was just 19 percent of the $150 million allocation Biotech Research had sought, but will help the group reduce the risk and cost to finance the research facility for biotechnology, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and other life-science fields.

Biotech Research is an independent entity with directors from Bank of Hawaii, Kamehameha Schools, University of Hawai'i, industry association Hawaii Life Sciences Council and the Seattle nonprofit Institute for Systems Biology.

Details of the project's financing effort, potential development timetable and location were not immediately available.

"Today's announcement promises more jobs and a brighter future for the Washington, DC area and for every community where (New Market Tax Credits) are allocated," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said in a statement. "By providing businesses with critical investments, job creation will be stimulated in communities that are very much in need."

Kaka'ako around the UH medial school qualifies as a low-income community under the program because census tracts covering the area have a combination of median family income that is 80 percent or less than the greater area's median family income, and a poverty rate above 20 percent.