Business accelerator planned for Cayuga County in 2016

AUBURN, N.Y. — Cayuga County entrepreneurs and startups looking for space to manufacture their products and receive technical and financial assistance may get a new place to call home by mid-2016.

The Cayuga Economic Development Agency (CEDA) and CenterState CEO, which operates the Tech Garden business incubator in Syracuse, are teaming up to develop a new business accelerator for small companies in need of flexible manufacturing space to develop their products.

Calling it the Innovation Business Accelerator (IBA), the partners initially envision a 30,000-square-foot facility, “with a good two-thirds of that being flexible, adjustable manufacturing and assembly space,” Andrew Fish, executive director of CEDA and the Cayuga County Chamber of Commerce, said Thursday at the chamber’s annual Economic Forecast Luncheon in Auburn.

He said the goal is to identify a location for the IBA in the Auburn area in the first half of this year and have the facility up and running by June 2016.

The IBA could provide space for companies to manufacture goods made of plastic, metal or other materials, and for the production of value-added food products, Seth Mulligan, VP for innovation services at CenterState CEO and a management and finance mentor at the Tech Garden, said at the luncheon, held at the Hilton Garden Inn.

Such space is in demand, according to Mulligan, noting there is not enough in the region for product innovators. For example, the 33,000-square-foot Tech Garden, and its recently launched 18,300-square-foot Tech Garden II, is all office space, focused primarily on software development. It’s also mostly full.

Mulligan envisions bringing the same motivators and rapid innovation techniques used in software incubation to product development at the IBA in Cayuga County. Organizers hope to engage Cayuga County product manufacturers such as Currier Plastics, UPSCO, Cayuga Milk Ingredients, and others in the effort, he said.

Fish projects a competitive process for companies to qualify for admittance to the IBA.

 “The entire purpose of why we’re doing this is so that we are — we are increasing drastically the success rate of the companies that are starting up,” said Fish.

“This isn’t about subsidized space. If incubators or accelerators become about subsidized space, you’re done,” he added. “It has to be sustainable, so all these things that we’re talking about are not going to be freebies.”

Fish said he would like the project partners to develop a $3 million seed fund to make seed investments in the Innovation Business Accelerator’s startups, but require companies to stay in Cayuga County for a certain amount of time. The idea is to keep the new jobs in the area. He also would like to see portions of the seed money designated for certain sectors.

Fish told the luncheon audience that many of them would be asked for their input and given updates about the IBA project over the coming months.