Feds help fund ‘Innovation’

BILL O’BOYLE

boboyle@timesleader.com

WILKES-BARRE – With federal, state, county and local officials standing in the sweltering heat Tuesday morning, Willie Taylor made the wait well worth their while.

Taylor, regional director of the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Philadelphia Regional Office, presented a check for $2,263,500 that will be used to construct a new building for the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business & Industry’s Innovation Center.

The new 30,000-square-foot facility will be built at 27-29 S. Main St. in space once occupied by the Blum Brothers clothing store.

The funding will expand the chamber’s existing Innovation Center to create affordable office space for local small businesses, which will help them develop their companies and encourage start-up companies to locate and grow in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

The project’s total cost is around $5 million, which includes $2 million already received in state funding through the Department of Community and Economic Development’s Industrial Development Program and Local Share Account grant funds.

The remaining debt will be assumed by the chamber.

John Augustine, senior director of economic and entrepreneurial development with the chamber, said that since 2004 the original Innovation Center has housed 15 startup companies, which have added more than $2 million into the local economy. They fostered the creation of more than 115 new jobs, paying average an annual wage of $62,000.

Augustine said the new center will create at least 100 new jobs and construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2011. He said it will take a year from then to complete the project.

Chamber President/CEO Todd Vonderheid thanked Taylor and the EDA and the federal delegation of U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, D-Nanticoke; U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Scranton, and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Philadelphia.

“This new building will give our community the kind of space required to allow us to not only build on the success of our existing incubator, but most importantly to create a more formal relationship between area colleges, universities and private investors that will ensure the necessary support for entrepreneurs over the long term,” Vonderheid said.