Business Incubator Project

About the Program

Category: Community and Economic Development (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

DeKalb County, Illinois built a Community Outreach Building on their south campus in 2008-2009. Among the County services housed in the new building was their Home Health Care Unit. Late in 2012, a local hospital group purchased the unit, leaving sixteen offices and twenty-seven cubicles empty in the new building. Efforts were made to rent the unused space, which were partially successful when one not-for-profit moved into five of the offices. With nearly half of the building space still empty, the County’s Economic Development Committee, a sub-committee of the County Board, began exploring possible alternative uses for the vacancy. Ultimately, the desire to utilize unused space and the availability of talented employees to assist in implementation, coupled with a wide variety of outstanding local assets such as locational advantage, educational opportunity, state of the art world-wide web technology, a well-trained workforce, innovative thinking, a well-established business climate, and reasonable startup costs yielded the decision to launch the DeKalb County Business Incubator in July, 2016. According to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, ours is the only known business incubator developed, funded, and managed solely by an Illinois county. Indeed, it may be one of a few of its kind in the country to be government owned. On July 1, 2016, the DeKalb County Business Incubator opened with four tenants, which expanded to six tenants within two months of opening. Since its inception, the Business Incubator has reviewed twelve tenant applications, been involved in student “shark-tank” type competitions at both Northern Illinois University and a local high school, offered two free small business workshops in partnership with Kishwaukee Community College, and had volunteer NIU and high school students providing critical, no-cost market research for tenants. What were previously unpaid student volunteers have now become interns, receiving compensation by stipend or college credit. Today, three new tenants are under consideration, two of our six tenants have expanded and hired employees, while two others have added interns.