CTTC Newsletter: Top Story

The Carbondale Technology Transfer Center's growth exemplifies the new direction in the upper Lackawanna Valley.

"This is just the beginning, I think, for an area that I've said for years will lead this valley in job creation and housing and other assets," CTTC President Raymond S. Angeli observed during the opening of the center's new space. The addition brings the facility's area to 30,000 square feet, expected to be enough to house about 20 firms and generate a substantial volume of new companies for the community.

"Incubators help companies to get started," CTTC Executive Director Paul Browne Said.

Then, those established companies move into their own facilities. National Business Incubator Association figures show 84 percent of companies starting in incubators remain in or near the incubator's community. We hope to hit that figure, and that would mean six or seven companies per year for the immediate area."

Gerry Ephault, regional manager of Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania, noted the importance of the center's growth to Carbondale and to the region.

"It's part of the change of the culture and the economic structure of the region," he said. "It's an ingredient in the transformation process. It's not the only factor that's required, but it is a part of it and it's a very dynamic manifestation of the transformation."

High-tech jobs created by CTTC companies will strengthen the area's economy by their quality and by their effect on underemployment, he said, thus benefiting the area's image and self-image.

"I'm very enthusiastic about it," Mr. Ephault said.

"It is exactly what Ben Franklin is looking for, the type of activity where the community is behind the change process. It's allowing not only the transformation of the region, but of the image. It's the image of the region's entrepreneurial culture and then the opportunity for companies to succeed here because it provides the resources."

 

 

Mr. Angeli praised federal and state officials for their confidence in the project and for their work to ensure its completion.

"It's really been a bipartisan effort," he said. "This project has $850,000 that was brought to the table through the efforts starting with (former) Congressman Joseph McDade and closing with Congressman Don Sherwood. Through those efforts, this building we're sitting in here today is possible. It was also assisted by $116,000 from the (Pennsylvania) Department of Community and Economic Development which Senator Robert Mellow was responsible for putting here."

Mr. Angeli also commented on one of the expansion's more unusual aspects.

"Very seldom do you get the opportunity to have a project that looks like what you actually designed," he said. "In truth, this is what we planned to do - come up here, build this center, build the industrial park, and then have an expansion and create this environment where we could have a place for light manufacturing assembly and new technology enterprises."

The importance of the center's addition was recognized well before its formal dedication and well beyond Carbondale. In its June 2000 issue, the National Business Incubator Association's NBIA Review featured a short article discussing the work and citing the demands upon the center for additional space. It pointed to off-site clients as indications that increasing the center's usable area was a necessity.

Mr. Browne stressed the significance to such notice of the center's efforts to meet the needs of its market, particularly because of the article's having appeared in a publication so widely read and respected.

"NBIA Review is the trade journal of the incubator industry," he said, "and it has a worldwide distribution. Its coverage of the center's expansion is significant because it shows that the association sees the importance of the project."

It also spreads the word on the center's success and the opportunities available to start-up businesses in the Carbondale area.

"This explains to an extremely broad audience exactly what we're doing at the center," Mr. Browne said. "It shows the CTTC merits attention at more than the local or regional level."