Marist College plans this spring to begin renovating a former waste recycling center in Poughkeepsie to house a new Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where small and medium-size businesses can make use of advanced technologies and the college”™s cloud computing and data analytics resources as office tenants.
The college last December was awarded a $1.5 million grant from Empire State Development, the state”™s chief economic development arm, for the approximately $15.8 million project. The proposed Marist center was selected by the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council as a priority project in the 2015 round of funding applications to Albany for public and private economic development projects across the state.
The college in 2013 purchased a 45,000-sqaure-foot warehouse and manufacturing building at 51 Fulton St. last used by the Dutchess County Resource Recovery Agency. Renamed the Fulton Technology Crossroad, the building lies within a new Science and Research area on the east side of the Poughkeepsie campus. It is near the $33 million Science and Allied Health Building that opened this semester, Marist spokesman Greg Cannon said.
In recent years, “We”™ve grown a lot, but especially on Route 9, where we started out,” Cannon said. “With this (science) building, we”™re kind of ramping up the academic presence on the other side of Route 9 on the eastern side of campus.”
The college plans to develop 25,000 square feet of space in the Fulton Technology CrossRoad building as offices designed for technology-based small and medium businesses, high-speed network connections to Manhattan and an interoperable data center to promote economic development in the community, according to Marist officials. The facility “will leverage advanced technologies to provide the local economy with much-needed purpose-built space and functions not normally available to small and medium businesses,” they said.
The Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council when promoting the Marist center as a priority project said the Fulton Technology CrossRoad will position the seven-county region “as a world center of connectivity for advanced technology, analytics-based companies, cybersecurity research and commercialization, and will allow the region to attract and grow jobs in the IT industry.”
Cannon said the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is expected to open in the summer of 2018 following a two-year build-out.
“We want to help businesses in the area to better utilize and leverage technology,” he said. “We would be actively looking to recruit businesses that want to work with us” as Marist tenants.
Cannon said the Fulton Street center would give Marist a platform for a Start-Up New York tax-free zone on campus if it chooses to participate in the fledgling state incentive program to attract startup companies and expanding or relocating businesses to regions of New York in partnerships with public and private colleges and universities.
In contributing to the region”™s economic development, “We”™re trying to strengthen our existing area of expertise, which is the cloud computing and analytics,” Cannon said. Those campus enterprises include the New York State Cloud Computing and Analytics Center, which was awarded a $3 million state grant in 2012, and the Institute for Data Center Professionals.
The Fulton Street center “is just another piece in our effort” to support business development, Cannon said. “We have a pretty good track record in helping businesses.”
