Incubators Reach Out Help to Hurricane Victims

Among the cities hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina was Biloxi, Miss., home of the Gulf Coast Business Technology Center. Part of the incubator’s metal roof was torn off, opening several offices to the elements, says Executive Director Adele Lyons. Although the city didn’t experience flooding like New Orleans, groundwater welled up and soaked the incubator’s administrative offices.

“It’s starting to smell funky,” she says.

With the region’s widespread infrastructure damage, Lyons fears it may be eight months or more before high-speed Internet access can be restored. That kind of interruption in business can be fatal to a small enterprise. But incubator managers in the region are scrambling to help entrepreneurs get back on their feet.

Doug Lee, executive director of the Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, is opening his doors to entrepreneurs from New Orleans, 80 miles to the south. In cooperation with the Baton Rouge Technology Council, the park has made available workstations with high-speed Internet access and phone service for at least three months to members of the Louisiana Technology Council. Dell Computers donated equipment for the outreach effort.

“Even our incubator companies with empty cubicles are volunteering that space,” says Lee.

Likewise, DeAnna Adams, director of the Mississippi Technology Alliance Innovation Center in Jackson, Miss., has been fielding calls from companies on the Gulf Coast who are looking for new, temporary homes.

“We are pleased to be able to help,” Adams says. “We were inconvenienced, but the coast was decimated.”

The region’s excess incubator space won’t be enough to meet demand, though. Adams is making a list of vacant apartments that can be converted to offices, and Charlie D’Agostino, executive director of the Louisiana Business & Technology Center in Baton Rouge, is working with the city’s chamber of commerce to help find commercial space for New Orleans companies.

“For at least the next 30 days, nobody’s going to be in business down there,” he says.

The hurricane’s ill winds are blowing some good for small companies with innovative products. One of D’Agostino’s clients, First Responder Systems and Technology, designs and builds software for emergency and public safety organizations. As the hurricane approached, officials from the city of Baton Rouge contracted with the company to map public services and distribution centers in the city, which will be the base for recovery to the south.

“Baton Rouge is going to be the staging area to rebuild New Orleans,” says D’Agostino, who notes that officials from New Orleans are observing the company’s work and may offer a similar contract.

The scope of the devastation can be overwhelming — even for the can-do incubation community. “My personality is, ‘OK, let’s see how we can get this done,’” says Adams. “But then you stand there and think, ‘OK, now what?’”

And given the severity of the damage on the Gulf Coast, it will be months before life returns to anything approaching normal. D’Agostino fears that Katrina may have doomed New Orleans’ incubators, at least for the time being.

“I don’t know if any of the incubators in New Orleans can survive,” he says.

But over in Biloxi, Lyons is still in business. On Tuesday afternoon, as she waited for a roofer to come to give an estimate on repairs, she also expected the arrival of an 18-wheeler filled with clothes for hurricane victims. The clothes will be stored in the incubator’s warehouse until they are sent on to a distribution center. The Small Business Administration was due to set up shop in the center as well until its own offices are repaired. And potential clients were stopping by, full of ideas to fill new needs.

One woman hoped to open a tutoring business to continue kids’ educations until local schools can be repaired.

“She asked, ‘Are you having any seminars?’” Lyons says. “I said, ‘Yes, but let me get the power back on first.’” —Corinne Colbert