SU’s South Side Innovation Center awarded National Grid Main Street Revitalization Grant

SU’s South Side Innovation Center awarded National Grid Main Street Revitalization GrantDecember 13, 2006Amy Schmitzaemehrin@syr.edu

The Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises (EEE) Program in the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University has received a $50,000 Main Street Revitalization Grant from National Grid in support of entrepreneurial ventures of SU’s South Side Innovation Center (SSIC), located on South Salina Street.

The Main Street Revitalization Grant is a New York State Public Service Commission-approved National Grid Economic Development Plan for upstate New York; it aims to assist communities in promoting smart growth and private sector investments in select business districts and commercial corridors. The SSIC will use the grant to continue remodeling and expansion of its incubator space. The Main Street Grant is the most recent example of National Grid’s continued support of SU and the Whitman School.

“The Main Street Grant is a huge benefit to the SSIC and to the South Side neighborhood,” says Joe Dickson, managing director of the SSIC and the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship in the Whitman School. “The support from National Grid will enable us to purchase more equipment and furniture that will expand our incubator space and make it more useful to prospective tenants. We are busy recruiting new tenants and are confident that this grant will go a long way toward assisting with that effort.”

Launched in April 2006, the SSIC is a 14,000-square-foot, inner-city business incubator, designed to foster the creation of new ventures as well as help to make existing ones sustainable. The program is part of the larger South Side Entrepreneurial Connect Initiative (SSECP), which seeks to identify and support 100 sustainable ventures over five years, and includes infrastructure building, student and faculty engagement through consulting teams, a microcredit fund, training programs for entrepreneurs, and opportunities for minority purchasing.

Entrepreneur Magazine and The Princeton Review rank the EEE program in the Whitman School #1 for graduate entrepreneurship programs and #2 for undergraduate entrepreneurship programs nationwide.

For more information or to schedule interviews, contact Amy Mehringer, communications manager for the Whitman School of Management, at (315) 443-3834 or aemehrin@syr.edu.