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By M. PAUL JACKSON mjackson@leader.net
Wednesday, January 26, 2000 Page: 10B
SCRANTON – A grant from Bell Atlantic-PA to the University of Scranton’s
Center for Public Initiatives will be used to attract small businesses and
entrepreneurs to the region.
The university will use the $100,000 grant to create an Internet Web site
with access to information and resources offered by the university as well as
national and worldwide services, Glenn Pellino, center executive director,
said Friday.
The site, known as a Web portal, will focus on providing information for
small business owners and entrepreneurs in an attempt to draw more high-tech
businesses to the region, Pellino said.
“We have made a great effort in the past four years to try and ensure that
we effectively deal with our future,” said Pellino. “I think we are poised
to really become a functional, regional economy.”
Pellino could not say exactly when the site would be up and running or what
the address will be. A prototype could be available by summer.
“Small business is really where the jobs are coming from in Northeastern
Pennsylvania,” said Howard Grossman, executive director of the Economic
Development Council of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
“We’re not only on the mark of the new millennium. … It’s also the mark
for a very, very positive future for this region.”
The grant is one of two given recently by Bell Atlantic to the university.
In 1997, the phone company awarded another $100,000 to the school to set up
four computer workstations in Wayne, Monroe, Lackawanna and Lycoming counties.
Bell Atlantic-PA President and Chief Executive Officer Daniel Whelan said
the university asked the phone company for the Web site grant.
“This area is a great place for us to do business,” Whelan said. The site
“will further aid what is already tremendous growth in the state of
Pennsylvania.”
The site can’t bring in new businesses by itself, officials said.
The site “is just another resource,” university spokesman Bill Genello
said. “This is simply another resource entrepreneurs and small business can
take advantage of.”
Call Jackson at 829-7134.