With 26 years
of experience and 410,000 square feet in seven
buildings, the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago’s
Fulton-Carroll Center is one of the oldest and largest
incubation programs in the United States. But after a
decade of success in the 1980s, the incubator fell on
hard times in the 1990s. The incubator hired four
different property management companies during that
period, and the results weren’t good: Incubator services
dwindled and clients lost their connection to each other
and their community. By 2001, FCC was more like an
office building in disrepair than a thriving incubation
program, and many clients were delinquent on their
rents.
A new century,
though, brought new chances. Under the leadership of
ICNC Executive Director Joyce Shanahan, the council
resumed direct control of the incubator. In 2002, ICNC
took out a $3.25 million line of credit (and launched a
major capital campaign) to begin long-term building
improvements. ICNC also took steps to shore up FCC’s
incubation focus, including opening an on-site Small
Business Development Center.
The result?
FCC now operates at 95 percent occupancy, and its
finances have grown stronger each year. Building revenue
increased by nearly $400,000 between 2002 and 2004, and
program income has grown in both aggregate amount and
diversity of sources. And delinquencies have decreased
from 32 percent in 2003 to less than 8 percent in 2004.
ICNC now is
raising funds to rehab and equip a commercial kitchen
incubator at FCC, and the organization recently received
a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic
Development Administration to revamp a revolving loan
fund for microenterprise clients.
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From the National Business Incubation Association
Website: www.nbia.org
Each
year, the NBIA Incubation Awards honor the business
incubators, client companies and graduates that
exemplify the best in the industry. The diversity of our
award winners is proof that excellence has many faces
and that numbers alone never tell the whole story.