The University of Central Florida is getting nearly $6 million from the state budget for a new business incubator facility that will help it keep jobs in its area and boost the creation of high-tech, specialized small businesses looking for a way to get off the ground.
With the new incubator and research facility, expected to cost a total $20 million and to be completed by the end of 2012, the university is further growing a resource that now allows it to generate $800,000 in revenue annually.
Its only one of several attempts by state universities in recent years to expand their roles in working with new businesses to stimulate local job growth and foster development of high-paying, specialized industries through incubators. But other projects are having to make do without the state cash.
UCFs new multi-disciplinary business incubator and research facility is receiving $5.92 million from the Public Education Capital Outlay and Debt Service Trust Fund (PECO) in the 2010/2011 state budget. That is part of a total of $49 million UCF received for all of its projects from the much sought-after higher education funding the state allocates for costly building renovations and additions.
The facility will concentrate on researching and developing cutting-edge technology and transferring it to commercial markets, said Thomas O'Neal, founder and executive director of UCF's business incubator program. It will be located right next to the university's engineering building on the UCF main campus, and the nearly $6 million in PECO funds will be used to develop plans for the building.
UCF has been a big player in the business incubator game since it started the Business Incubator at the Central Florida Research Park in 1999.
Since then, the schools incubator facilities have grown to seven locations throughout Central Florida, with a new, 8,000-square-foot, mixed-use incubator to be completed in rented office space in downtown Kissimmee by the end of the year.
The programs business clients, essential to creating jobs and innovation, have grown to more than 140, and its total revenue output has expanded to more than $500 million. The program has created more than 1,600 jobs in the area, with an average salary of $59,000. It has raised an investment of $190 million, according to UCFs numbers. It has generated more than 286 patents for its clients and graduated 42 businesses, 35 of which are currently in the area.
ONeal said state funding for incubator programs has improved, but the university has historically relied on local county and city dollars to fund its projects. The state is now coming around to the importance of business incubators in facilitating job and technology growth.
I think theres a renewed interest, he said.
Florida Gulf Coast University wasnt lucky in its bid for PECO money to support a public-private incubator project focused on renewable energy in Fort Myers. The university's request for $5 million from the fund for a research facility at the site of Florida Gulf Coust University Innovation Hub was axed as part of Gov. Charlie Crists veto of $80 million in PECO-funded projects.
The money would have helped the university get its plans for a 50,000-square-foot renewable energy research building at the proposed 1.5-million-square-foot Innovation Hub off the ground. The Hub is a $12 million partnership between the Fort Myers-based university and the private Backe Group, the brainchild of John Backe, president of the Backe Foundation, and Galvano Development.
Although we were surprised and disappointed in the governor's veto of this important project for renewable energy research that was funded by the Legislature, we will bring the project back again in 2011 as a legislative funding request, said FGCU spokesperson Susan Evans in an e-mail. In addition, we will continue to explore opportunities for funding, including possible federal funds.
The University of Florida is hoping to open a 40,000-square-foot business incubator by the winter of 2011, but it is largely funded with federal money, not PECO funds. The university was promised an $8.2 million injection from the federal Economic Development Administration and is using $5 million of its own money to fund the Florida Innovation Hub business incubator at the former site of Shands AGH.
The Hub will house 12-14 businesses specializing in medical devices, technology and renewable energy development, said David Day, director UF's office of Technology Licensing and UF's first business incubator, the Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator, founded in 1995.
Incubators are but one of the resources Florida needs to support to diversify its economy and bring specialized jobs to the state, Day said, and he thinks the state will have a more significant role to play in developing them in the future than they've had in the past .
"Businesses that get started in an incubator are far more likely to survive than those that have not," he said.
Reach Alex Tiegen at Alex.Tiegen@gmail.com or 561-329-5389.
