New Incubator Space in West Mesa

[Francine]

Hooray!!! I'm here at the West Mesa Business Incubator, the
culmination of almost a year of planning on the part of the West Mesa
Community Development Corporation and Stealthmode Partners. WMCDC has
an almost empty building on the outskirts of downtown Mesa that they
have given us to use as space for co-working, business acceleration,
and resources. We've got all the basics: free wi-fi, tables and
chairs, conference and training rooms, a kitchen, the wonderful
executive director with all her connections to resources, and us.

This is big for the Phoenix area, which already has Gangplank for tech
company acceleration (we're there, too), and now will have a place for
health care and retail support businesses. After forty years, this
community is beginning to support its local businesses and provide
some infrastructure to help them grow.

We're going to kick the incubator off formally with an Open House on
Tuesday, Feb. 2, from 4:30-6 at 587 W. 10th St., in Mesa..

This particular partnership is trying to grow businesses in the
vicinity of downtown Mesa, especially the kinds of businesses that
will support the expansion of Banner Health, whose corporate center is
across the street, and which is in the middle of a big expansion. We
will once again use the Kauffman Foundation's Fasttrac program,
because we love it and we know it works.

If you, or anyone you know, has a home-based business and would like
to co-work, or is up for starting a business to serve this part of the
community, we can get you all the help you need. We also have a place
for user groups and community groups to meet, too.

Now that we've done this, we will have to prove to the community that
it works. That involves people coming to work here. Jo Ellen and I
have a dream that there can be child care here one day, too:-)