IT'S TIME FOR BUSINESS INCUBATOR TO TAKE ROOT

Southeast Missouri State University has long been a leader in business education. Now, the university has embarked on a new business venture: a technology park.

The university hopes to attract small, light manufacturing companies that will forge an alliance with higher education in terms of student internships, research and much more.

At this point, the park is nothing more than 13 acres of vacant land along South Kingshighway. We feel the park has much potential especially in terms of spurring development of a business incubator here.

An incubator would be a natural for the university. Many times these new businesses are blessed with considerable technical expertise, but limited resources for promotion, accounting, and other more mundane operational matters.

Students and faculty could share expertise and resources with these budding businesses. In an incubator atmosphere, these companies could also share utility and secretarial costs as a way to cut down on monthly expenses.

Students will be involved with park businesses through internships for case studies, product or marketing research, and in many other capacities. Shared expertise could stretch beyond the College of Business to students and faculty in industrial technology, science, and other disciplines.

As businesses "graduate" from the incubator, they would locate elsewhere making way for a new business start.

But the responsibility of setting up an incubator should not rest with the university alone. This has long been a dream of the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce. The downtown Florsheim site proved impractical and the project was placed on hold. Now, the chamber should join with the university to get this incubator rolling. The city could also provided a hand in promoting the concept and facilitating development.

There are no utilities in the park, although the city has extended a sewer line to the front of the site. The city also recently paved the access street.

Although the land was donated, the university will sell the property as a way to offset the cost of developing the park's infrastructure, said Linda Cochran, who heads up economic development activities at the university. The university will provide water, electricity, gas, sewer and streets to tenants. But development may wait on signing the first business, as community block grants may be available. The price will be comparable to other industrial parks, although exact costs have not yet been released.

The university wisely is targeting much smaller businesses for the park. Southeast must be careful to maintain its educational focus, and not compete with other local developers.

A business incubator has worked well at many other campuses, including Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff. There's no reason it couldn't work well here, too.

The university, chamber and city should get behind the business incubator concept. The time for dreaming is over. We need leadership and action to make the business incubator a reality here.