The cubicles
lining the small room are empty on a Tuesday afternoon, with just a
few handwritten nameplates giving any hint of who usually sits at
the desks.
The quiet is fine with Ken Coleman, manager of the Micro Business
Incubator on North Myrtle Avenue: He's happier with his clients out
on the streets, out building their businesses.
"We're here to give them the tools they need to succeed," Coleman
said. "It's up to them to use them."
The First Coast is seeing increased interest in organizations
providing small-business owners with the tools they need, as
incubators slowly become part of the development landscape in the
Jacksonville area: Two sites are under construction and another two,
including Micro Business, haved their doors.
Incubators are something like a mixture of an office park and a
business school for entrepreneurs. Clients -- usually newly started
businesses -- typically get cheap rent, but the more valuable part
is the nontangible assistance, ranging from seminars on bookkeeping
to help in devising a business plan to contact with venture
capitalists.
"We're more like consultants than landlords," said Al Rossiter,
president and chief executive officer of the Technology Enterprise
Center, Jacksonville's oldest incubator, whichd in 2000. "It's
easy looking at incubators to get focused on the physical
facilities. We're like the physical plant for a university. It's
what's inside that's important."
| To
learn more
Beaver Street Enterprise
Center
FreshMinistries
1131 N. Laura
St.
http://www.freshministries.org/
Business and Emerging Technology
Accelerator
1896 South 14th Street, Suite
6
Amelia Island
http://www.beta-1.com/
Technology Enterprise
Center
Enterprise North Florida Corp.
4905
Belfort Road, Suite 110
(904) 730-4700
http://www.enfc.org/
Micro Business
Incubator
UrbanCore Enterprises Inc.
2933
North Myrtle Ave.
Suite 200
(904) 301-3760
|
Nationally,
incubators have been around for decades -- the first incubatord in New York in 1959, according to the National Business
Incubation Association -- but the incubation industry didn't take
off until the end of the 1970s. The U.S. Small Business
Administration heavily promoted the concept throughout the 1980s,
and the number of incubators exploded during the tech boom of the
1990s.
There are now more than 800 incubators in the United States, the
national association says, up from 12 two decades ago.
Two kinds of incubators can be found on the First Coast,
demonstrating the range of approaches incubators use.
The Technology Enterprise Center on the Southside and the
Business and Emerging Technology Accelerator on Amelia Island both
strive to help technology-based companies succeed. FreshMinistries'
Beaver Street Enterprise Center and UrbanCore Enterprises Inc.'s
Micro Business Incubator on North Myrtle Avenue are focused on
trying to revitalize their neighborhoods.
Selecting a niche is a good move for incubators, national experts
said, because it lets them know what tools they need to have on
hand.
"If you have a focus -- either on a certain type of company or a
certain population, like women or minorities -- then you're working
with people who have the same challenges, who are undergoing the
same shared experiences," said Meredith Erlewine, director of
publications for the national association.
Coleman's Micro Business Incubator, for instance, wants to help
minority contractors, leading the center to offer courses in things
such as blueprint reading and bidding on government contracts --
subjects much more important to the clients it's looking to attract
than they would be to, say, a technology company that would fit in
better at the Business and Emerging Technology Accelerator, known as
BETA-1.
At BETA-1, a for-profit incubator on Amelia Island, the focus is
on clients who do "lots of life science-type things," President and
Chief Executive Officer Ray Chauncey said, leading him to build a
facility that includes a wet lab and a small manufacturing area
where clients can produce prototypes.
"It's unusual to have that type of focus here," Chauncey said.
"There's a couple other places in the country, but I think there's a
need for it here."
BETA-1 has four clients leasing space in the temporary quarters
it's occupying: Two of them make medical devices, one does software
and the fourth is in telecommunications.
North Florida is good for technology start-ups, Chauncey said,
because of the wealth of experienced, retired executives in the
area, giving a pool of people willing to serve as company officers
or board members. BETA-1 also can tap that network for companies
that have been around a while and are looking to grow, a category
that many incubators don't work with.
"I just think there's a need," Chauncey said. "There's a lot of
people we're talking with who can't quite take it to the next level.
They just hit a wall. They need some people added to their board but
don't know where to look. There are people here who are retired, but
how much golf can you actually play? They have strong talents, and
somebody helped them, so they're willing to lend a hand."
The Technology Enterprise Center is, as its name implies, looking
for technology clients as well, although it's not as narrowly
focused as BETA-1.
"What we're looking for are companies that can grow to a very
significant size," said Rossiter, the president of TEC. "We're not
looking for small businesses. We're looking for embryonic big
businesses."
That focus dictates what type of facilities TEC offers: Its
complex in the Liberty Business Park in Southpoint has fiber-optic
cables running throughout the place and features moveable walls,
making it easy to modify office layouts as client businesses grow.
 |
Crews work on the
roof of FreshMinistries' Beaver Street incubator. The facility
shouldby the end of the year.
-- Don Burk/Staff
|
Incubators are important,
Rossiter said, because entrepreneurs and inventors usually are
experts in their field but might not know anything about running a
business.
"When we meet with potential clients, we try to get an idea of
their business model, to identify their market," he said. "Most
breakthrough products are just that -- breakthroughs. They're not
something you already see out there. We have to figure out if
they're potentially viable. We help them lay out a roadmap."
Although they're working with businesses of all sizes, that's
that same type of help provided by Coleman at the Micro Business
Incubator and by Michael Bryant at the Beaver Street Enterprise
Center. The Beaver Street Center, run by Core City Business
Incubators on behalf of FreshMinistries, is the city's newest
incubator, with the 25,000-square-foot facility still under
construction. The construction work should be finished by the end of
the year, officials said, but Core City already has started trying
to help local businesses.
FreshMinistries decided the incubator was needed in the area
after a city-sponsored study it requested showed that Jacksonville's
inner city had a lot of assets that would make it attractive to
industry, especially if they could see other companies surviving
there.
"The problems facing the inner city are economic," Bryant said.
"There's not enough money there, and that's the root of a lot of
other issues."
The Beaver Street area is a good place to set up shop, Bryant
said, because of its proximity to the highways, airport and
waterways, as well as large potential workforce and a large number
of distribution companies.
"We needed a demonstration project to show that locating in that
area will work," Bryant said. "The incubator is a way to show that
businesses will work there while also giving community ownership."
About 100 companies have approached Bryant about signing up with
the Beaver Street Center, he said. Most of the interest is coming
from service companies, including marketing firms, staffing and
human relations consultants, and financial service providers. Some
companies that do assembly work also have expressed interest.
The facility, which should be finished by the end of the year,
also will serve as an "incubator without walls" for companies that
choose not to locate in the center, hosting seminars and other
learning opportunities that business owners from around the area can
attend.
"We're reaching out to the entire business community, trying to
establish relationships," Bryant said.
That's the same thing Coleman, at Micro Business, is trying to
do.
"We're focused on the little guy, the guy who's working out of
the back of his truck or on the dining room table or in the spare
bedroom," he said. "We're looking to help nurture growth, to let
them see how to get to the next level."
Minorities in Jacksonville have had trouble breaking into
subcontracting work, Coleman said, partially because they don't have
the mentors and contacts that other tradesmen might have. Through
the incubator, the small concrete workers, carpenters and other
skilled laborers have had the chance to work with larger
contractors, who provide both training and access to jobs.
"It's given them an opportunity while helping the community at
large," Coleman said. "Developing small businesses is a key
ingredient in seeing economic development in the area."
Staff writer Timothy J. Gibbons can be reached at (904)
359-4103 or via e-mail at tgibbonsjacksonville.com.
