A $21 million center designed to help Maryland's baby biotechnology companies grow into healthy teen-agers will be situated on five acres of city-owned land at the Johns Hopkins University's Bayview Campus in Baltimore, the center's board said yesterday.

The center will nurture companies trying to turn laboratory creations into commercial products. It will rent space and will provide the expertise of Hopkins scientists and University of Maryland Baltimore County bioengineers.

Hopkins and UMBC had vied for the center to anchor their biotechnology industrial parks.