Wamp: Hamilton County planning to incorporate incubator into downtown tech education center

A new downtown hub for Hamilton County high school students learning career skills will include space for the county’s business development program, officials announced Wednesday.

The incubator program at the county’s Business Development Center allows local businesses to pay subsidized rent for three to five years while growing operations, depending on the kind of business.

Participating businesses were told Monday that the county is looking at selling the Business Development Center on Chattanooga’s North Shore.

County Mayor Weston Wamp, speaking alongside Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly and Superintendent Justin Robertson, said during a press conference Wednesday that the program will move into the Franklin-Roberts Future Ready Center planned at a former BlueCross BlueShield building at Gateway Avenue and West M.L. King Boulevard.

The center will likely be fully operational by fall 2028, Wamp said in an interview after the press conference, though he said he assumes the incubator portion of the building will be ready sooner than that.

The incubator program has been in place for three decades, run by the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce. The Business Development Center building currently houses 34 businesses with focuses ranging from software development to watercolor painting.

On Monday, several business owners working out of the development center told the Chattanooga Times Free Press they were concerned about future plans for the program. At the time, they hadn’t been told where the program would live once the building was sold. A couple said they had paid for updates to the building in order to operate new tech at their businesses.

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Wamp said the Business Development Center has been in disrepair for several years, with millions of dollars in deferred maintenance. He also said the interior was not conducive to good business — jail-like, he said, with very few windows inside and an awkwardly constructed conference room with pillars blocking people’s views. There are also limited parking options for both business owners and their customers, he said.

“All of the tenants are aware of the terrible condition of the building,” Wamp said. “Every last one of them recognizes the building is in disrepair.”

The new building will be closer to the downtown business core, he said, and it will be nicer overall than the current one. He would rather funnel money into the new incubator than spend it on revamping the old one, he said.

The county will offer all the businesses in the current incubator one more year-long lease, Wamp said. He and other officials have identified nine businesses that currently have program terms beyond that year, he said. The county will work with the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce to make that transition, he said.

“What we’ve worked through as recently as this morning with the chamber is continuity,” Wamp said. “There will be continuity for anybody who’s over there. Will it be the same incubator? No, it will be a whole lot better.”

(READ MORE: Hamilton County Schools expands centralized hubs for career and technical education)

The new program will introduce some additional organizations involved in running it, Wamp said, including local venture capital company Brickyard, business management consulting firm The Company Lab and Chattanooga Business Elite, an alliance of Black business owners in the city. The chamber will still be involved in running the program as well, in partnership with Hamilton County and the city of Chattanooga — a shift from when the chamber was the primary organization running it, Wamp said. That will spread the management burden more evenly in his view, he said.

The program will also loop in student involvement, Wamp said, requiring businesses to employ students to receive the subsidized rent at the building.

“This is going to be an incubator for the future that I really think will give rise to a generation of entrepreneurs,” he said. “I think it’s going to serve young people well in creative ways, in ways that aren’t currently happening.”

Students who participate in programs at a Future Ready center spend half the day at their zoned high school and half at the center, where they take classes based on career pathways ranging from cosmetology to car mechanics. The downtown center will have an entrepreneurship pathway, in partnership with businessman and former Chattanooga Mayor and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, Wamp said during the Wednesday press conference.

(READ MORE: Building resiliency: How a new incubator program is supporting local businesses looking to scale)

Hamilton County Commissioner Ken Smith, R-Hixson, said during the press conference that he started his first business at the county’s incubator. He was then able to move out and expand it, he said.

He also had the opportunity to take vocational classes during his senior year of high school, which significantly affected his career choices, he said.

“To be able to couple those things together in a new facility like this and encourage our youth to move forward and be an entrepreneur,” Smith said, “and potentially even go down the hall and start their own thing — that’s something that’s really remarkable. It will help set us apart.”

The old Sequoyah High School in Soddy-Daisy transitioned to the North River Future Ready Center at the beginning of the current school year. The Harrison Bay Future Ready Center launched in 2021. That will make the new downtown center the third in Hamilton County, and county officials say its opening will mean all students in the county will have the opportunity to participate in Future Ready programming.

Contact city and county reporter Siena Duncan at [email protected] or 423-757-6354.