New Olivet starts business incubator to revive neighborhood

 A business incubator has been opened by New Olivet Baptist Church as a means to create economic opportunities for those living in the nearby Orange Mound neighborhood.

The Olivet Incubation & Training Center at 645 Semmes has 9,000 square feet of office space for 17 tenants in spaces that range from 250 to 700 square feet and will rent for $1 to $5 per square foot. It also has two conference rooms that can be rented by the hour and a training room.

The incubator opened May 14 with three ground-floor tenants: Beautiful Me Salon, media marketing company Epic1Media and Ruby’s Sizzling Skillet, a “healthy soul food” restaurant that will open June 14. At 1,132 square feet, the restaurant is the largest tenant.

“It’s not just an incubator but a melting pot for business assistance for the community,” says Pamela Poston, executive administrative assistant at Delta Medical Center.

Poston is one of three New Olivet members serving as volunteer directors for the incubator. They have worked on the project for nearly two years. They also say Olivet Center has the potential to be a model for Memphis neighborhoods struggling to revitalize their commercial business sectors and provide employment opportunities for residents.

Early in their planning they met with Gwin Scott, director of Memphis’s oldest business incubator, EmergeMemphis.

Scott says the Olivet model is different from any of the three operating in the city. Those include EmergeMemphis, which focuses on high-growth companies, Memphis Bioworks, targeting largely biotech businesses, and the Center for Emerging Entrepreneurial Development, a Mid-South Minority Business Council initiative that focuses on vendors and suppliers.

The Olivet incubator will allow tenants to tap into business and financial resources such as technical advice, financing options and practical management direction.

“Like us, they won’t know all the answers so they need a solid base,” Scott says.

That will come from having volunteers that are well-connected and knowing where to get questions answered, he says.

Already the incubator’s directors have asked nonprofit alt.Consulting to work with tenants to provide management training, says managing director Cynthia Norwood.

Norwood will work with tenants to help them meet the goals of the incubator’s required business plan that includes a strategy to exit the incubator within three years. Tenants have certain built-in incentives to follow the plan, Norwood says.

“There are a lot of incubators that say it’s required but don’t make it required,” she says.

Director Michael De’Shazer, a senior vice president at FedEx Corp., says the idea for the incubator grew out of New Olivet pastor Kenneth Whalum’s desire to improve the nearby Orange Mound neighborhood.

The center will provide space at below market rates. Tenants are required to go through a lengthy application process, De’Shazer says, but once approved are not responsible for costs beyond the monthly rent, he says.

Tenants will be required to meet regularly with the directors or other business consultants to work on existing issues and develop an exit strategy, he says.

The building on Semmes, just around the corner from New Olivet’s home on Southern, seemed a perfect fit for an incubator, De’Shazer says. He points to numerous buildings around the incubator that are in various stages of revitalization or reuse, including a reopened rehabilitation center and day care center, and plans to renovate a nearby building for retail use.

Emily Trenholm, executive director of the Community Development Council of Greater Memphis, says the city has no program in place to fund neighborhood commercial revitalization programs, so incubators such as Olivet can play a vital role.

Good housing and schools are important, but the best neighborhoods have successful small business districts.

“You need those neighborhood hubs,” she says, “making them more attractive and bringing them back in some form or fashion.”

Olivet Incubation & Training Center Business incubator

Directors: Pam Poston, Michael De’Shazer, Rodney Mills

Address: 645 Semmes

Phone: (901) 454-7777

Web site: www.oitcenter.org 

csheffield@bizjournals.com | (901) 259-1726