Invoking the spirit of Otis Elevators, the city of Yonkers is launching a business incubator at i-Park Hudson dubbed Y-Enterprise, with the goal of giving a lift to upstart businesses in the very building where Otis once thrived.
The new i-Park Hudson facility arrives even as U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand introduced legislation to flood incubators nationally with $250 million in federal funding. It is one of multiple initiatives Gillibrand is proposing to help small business, including savings accounts that would allow entrepreneurs to sock away up to $10,000 annually on a tax-free basis and a 25 percent tax credit on angel investments in startups.
Incubators have been hatching in the tristate area without assistance from Gillibrand; in late March, automaker BMW announced it would launch a $100 million incubator in New York City to tap into the Big Apple”™s large workforce in mobile and location-based technologies.
In Connecticut, the city of Stamford is in negotiations to convert its Old Town Hall into an entrepreneurship center in the heart of downtown, with no deal finalized as of deadline. And in Bridgeport ”“ in some senses Yonkers”™ doppelganger in Connecticut given the cities”™ similar size and demographics ”“ a business incubator has been running less than a year adjacent to the campus of the University of Bridgeport.
Perhaps incredibly given the presence of IBM Corp. and other high-tech companies, just one organization in the lower Hudson Valley is a member of the Business Incubator Association of New York State, of nearly 50 statewide: the Orange County Business Accelerator.
The National Business Incubation Association says its members report that 87 percent of “graduates” are still in business, beating general survival rates for small businesses as reported by the federal government.
“While co-locating and clustering businesses is an important ingredient in the business incubation process, it”™s widely understood that it”™s the provision of business assistance services that improve business incubator clients”™ chances,” said David Monkman, CEO of NBIA, testifying on Capitol Hill last month. “And yet there currently is no federal funding mechanism to support business incubator programming in the United States.”
Yonkers Mayor Philip Amicone said the incubator will be able to offer state and federal incentives for companies that move to Yonkers, without immediately specifying the mix that would be offered.
A “Y-Innovate” program for startups charges $500 monthly per employee, and office space ranging between $1,000 and $2,500 a month. A second “Y-Expansion” program is designed for companies with more than eight workers.
In addition to the facility, tenants get access to business development, legal and accounting support, advice on accessing capital, and networking events and other forms of access to the business community in the lower Hudson Valley.
“Yonkers is a city on the rise and the Y-Enterprise program will have a major role in that upward momentum,” said Lou Kirven, commissioner of planning and development, in a prepared statement. “The goal of the Y-Enterprise program is to identify, promote and support the next generation of scalable businesses and enable them to move through the program, from a startup to the next stages of development, and perhaps become the next Otis or Kawasaki, which were the backbone of the Yonkers business community.”
