South side resurgence

University-created center bolsters economic growth downtown

By: Dan Briggs

Posted: 2/13/07

At first glance, the dilapidated buildings of Syracuse's South Side suggest economic barrenness. A gas station sags, the prices on its marquee missing critical digits. Broken windows of a vacant house are boarded up with plywood, presumably to deter squatters and thieves. But a more careful look will reveal what at first glance, seemed unthinkable: economic growth.

At 2610 S. Salina St., a building once home to Dunk & Bright furniture's showroom, economic revitalization is taking place in a whole new way. The building now houses the South Side Innovation Center, a business incubator created by Syracuse University.

The innovation center rents office space at a reduced rate to 14 small businesses. High-speed Internet, phone and fax services, conference rooms and printing are included. The businesses have access to special classes and seminars covering topics such as marketing and writing business plans.

Although the center cannot take on more tenants, it has the capacity to provide limited services to additional businesses. These services include access to conference rooms, access to a classroom with computers and consulting by graduate students from the university's Martin J. Whitman School of Management.

"Nobody's wading down into the worst areas of a city from a major university and trying to establish a beachhead of resource availability in which you can begin to grow economic revitalization," said Joe Dickson, manager of the center. "It's just not being done. We're creating the paradigm as we move forward."

The center, which opened on April 24, 2006, is what the university describes as the physical presence of the South Side Entrepreneurial Connect Project. The project's goal is to help create 100 sustainable businesses within five years.

So far the project helped create 15 to 20 businesses that did not exist two years ago, Dickson said.

Management of the connect project is the responsibility of the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship, part of the Whitman School's Department of Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises.

"It's (the project) kind of almost got a mind of its own at this point in time," Dickson said. "In moving forward it's become kind of the chancellor's poster child on scholarship-in-action and how to really make a difference in the community using the resources of a university."

The center's focus on human resources and personal relationships makes it unique, Dickson said. Other universities' business incubators tend to cater toward universities' engineering departments, focusing more on technology, Dickson said.

Syracuse University hopes to use the innovation center as a model and export it to universities in other cities, including the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and universities in New York City and Cleveland, Dickson said.

The initial planning for the connect project, the overarching initiative which the center belongs to, began more than four years ago. Michael H. Morris, who holds the Witting Chair in Entrepreneurship at Syracuse, helped develop the idea for a program to create economic growth while teaching in South Africa. Morris and his colleagues started the program to encourage entrepreneurship in South Africa's black townships, which Morris described as the most poverty-stricken areas of the country.

"A lot of what we developed there has some transferability to the inner cities of America," Morris said. "The issue is simply, 'how do you create economic opportunity for people?' And the old, out-of-date thinking is you do that by getting big companies, like General Electric or Wal-Mart to locate facilities in the inner city or wherever. And the reality is that's not how you do it. It doesn't work; it's not sustainable. You do it by doing it organically. By empowering people to create their own ventures and supporting them."

One of the support mechanisms includes helping South Side businesses obtain financing. The connect project's micro-credit loan program is available to help the center's tenants, as well as other South Side businesses, come up with capital.

Graduate students and SU faculty assist businesses interested in applying for micro-credit with the application process. The university itself does not make the loans; the money comes from the Syracuse Cooperative Federal Credit Union. Each loan is typically $5,000, which is then repaid back over a period of up to three years.

Other human resources offered by the center include business classes on the fourth Monday of every month. The classes take place in the morning and last about an hour. Attendance is not limited to the innovation center's members. Faculty, staff and students who work with the center will attempt to accommodate any South Side businesses interested in attending.

Uma Anne Sud, a graduate student working toward a master's degree in business administration at Whitman, was the program's resource network coordinator during the 2005-2006 academic year. Sud organized meetings, gathered marketing materials and promoted the connect project.

The most challenging part of her job was not her administrative duties, but gaining the trust of the South Side's business community, Sud said. Sometimes convincing business owners of the value of the human resources being provided, especially the classes, was more difficult than organizing the classes themselves, she said.

Working with the innovation center helped Sud learn how passion and the practical application of concepts she learned at Whitman intersect, she said.

"I think what it's done is, it's shown me the types of impact you can have," Sud said. "Even as a student on real life things. I developed a business plan for a possible business within the South Side, a food cooperative. It may not happen, but just to think that you're involved with something that could really come to fruition and have an impact on the community is kind of exciting."

Lura Lunkenheimer is the owner of Peaceful Schools, one of the businesses located in the center. Peaceful Schools sells products and services designed to help schools and youth programs resolve conflict between students from kindergarten to 12th grade. Lunkenheimer would like to take further advantage of the business classes, but they are often offered during the workday, she said.

Despite class scheduling conflicts, the center helped Lunkenheimer expand her business, she said. The connect project also gave her a scholarship to attend speaking events by several women entrepreneurs. Lunkenheimer said she thinks any problems the center has will be worked out, and the center will continue to improve in the future.

"The thing we're experiencing right now is learning to bring a group of small businesses together and share resources," she said. "It's just growing pains."

Ronald J. Klokus, a graduate student pursuing a master's degree in business administration at Whitman and a doctorate in jurisprudence at Syracuse University's College of Law, spends 12 to 15 hours at the center every week as part of his graduate assistantship. He provides several of the tenants with consulting work, from developing business plans to advising them on incorporation.

Klokus' main objective is to help the tenants succeed in running their businesses independently.

"We're just trying to set them up with the processes that will help them get more focused on their business, keep better track of all their numbers and this and that so they can grow," Klokus said.

For Piper N. Titus, a master of business administration student at Whitman, providing consulting for the center's tenants has been a learning experience. Working with tenants from the beginning stages of their businesses taught her to believe in the power of conviction.

When some of Titus' clients first told her their ideas for businesses, she was convinced they would never work. But after spending time with the tenants, she has seen ideas she once thought impossible transform into budding businesses.

"You start to help people think about how at the end of the year they're going to have a net income," Titus said. "A positive net income."