
{"id":27557,"date":"2012-08-30T09:46:59","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T13:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=27557"},"modified":"2012-08-30T09:46:59","modified_gmt":"2012-08-30T13:46:59","slug":"small-business-incubator-moves-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2012\/08\/30\/small-business-incubator-moves-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Small business incubator moves forward"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Rose Laudicina<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Staff Writer<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Orange County and the Town of Chapel Hill are teaming up to attract more small-business startups and entrepreneurs to downtown Chapel Hill. <\/p>\n<p>The two entities, with the help of UNC, are partnering to create and help subsidize a small-business incubator located at 321 W. Rosemary St. <\/p>\n<p>Last week the Orange County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to move the project forward by giving County Manager Frank Clifton the go-ahead to work with the town to sign the necessary inter-local agreement documents. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our goal is to nurture entrepreneurship,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Steve Brantley, Orange County economic-development director. <\/p>\n<p>While Chapel Hill is a desirable location for many small-business startups, especially those that come out of UNC, the space that is available is often too expensive for the startups to rent. With the lack of affordable locations for these businesses, the town and the county end up losing out as the businesses choose somewhere more affordable, which more often than not ends up being in Durham, Brantley said.  <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs that are coming out of the university and graduating, and they have a lot of great ideas,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Clifton said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need a lot of space, but some place bigger then a garage or their apartment,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he added. <\/p>\n<p>Former Chapel Hill economic-development director Dwight Bassett recognized this loss and started formulating an idea for a small-business incubator when he was working with 3 Birds Marketing to help them find a bigger space in Chapel Hill so they could expand. <\/p>\n<p>3 Birds Marketing occupies the space at 321 W. Rosemary St., formerly home to the nightclub Avalon, but has outgrown the office space. While the company wants to move to another location in Chapel Hill, they still have four years on their lease and could not afford to move into a new space and pay rent at both locations, Clifton said. <\/p>\n<p>To help 3 Birds Marketing, the town came up with a plan to find a use for their former space \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the home for the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first small-business incubator. <\/p>\n<p>While the project is primarily being coordinated by the town, Orange County will be providing $10,000 each quarter to assist with rent for the facilities. In total, the county will provide $140,000.  <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The tenants would be paying some rent,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Clifton said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but we will subsidize rent for the small businesses as they start up and get running.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>Clifton said the space is ideal for a new business with an employee base consisting of the founder and perhaps one or two employees, and there will be room for six to eight of these companies in the 4,000-square-foot building. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is just for small, one- or two-person enterprises that need a place to start getting their business off the ground,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Clifton said. <\/p>\n<p>Eventually, Clifton said he hopes the businesses that get their start through the incubator will invest back into the community by creating jobs and permanently locating in Orange County. <\/p>\n<p>Aaron Nelson, president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, said he believes the incubator will bring multiple benefits to the downtown community, from creating jobs to boosting Chapel Hill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reputation for supporting creativity and innovation. <\/p>\n<p>Nelson also said that while it will be great to have a place for innovators from UNC to start their businesses, he also thinks it will help draw people in from outside the university community. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153People want to be in a place that supports things like this,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Nelson said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Orange County and the Town of Chapel Hill are teaming up to attract more small-business startups and entrepreneurs to downtown Chapel Hill. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27558,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27557\/revisions\/27558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}