On Friday New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer announced a web portal for business on Thursday.
Known as NCCinnovates, the site aims to “support homegrown innovation and entrepreneurship to create sustainable local jobs.”
NCCinnovates features “customer, market and industry information, workforce data and help in identifying available commercial properties, along with incubator grants awarded to promising startup companies through partnerships with local pitch competitions.”
NCCinnovates is administered by the New Castle County Office of Economic Development. The office focuses on job creation through entrepreneurship, startup companies, existing small businesses and in providing a predictable land use planning process.
“The NCCinnovates portal is a great mixture of entrepreneurship and data, and it provides information every business needs,” said Tariq Hook, a software engineer, entrepreneur and executive director at ZipCode Wilmington. “Through Delaware’s Open Data Challenge, we recognized the need for one site that brings together data about how to start a business and available resources, and I applaud New Castle County for stepping up and creating this critically valuable resource.”
“It takes a village to grow a company, and NCCinnovates awards leverage partnerships to give start-ups critical support to build a solid foundation for success,” said Dora Cheatham, Executive Director of the Emerging Enterprise Center (EEC). “Through the EEC’s partnership with New Castle County, companies have office space, a place to meet clients, one-on-one mentoring and support in building a sustainable business model quickly so they can focus on growing their client base and expanding their businesses.”
This summer, the county presented its first NCCinnovates grant to local start-up D150 Fueling, in partnership with the Emerging Enterprise Center (EEC). The award comes with office space and amenities at the EEC, business growth workshops, referral services and a one-year membership in the New Castle County Chamber of Commerce.
NCCinnovates is administered by the New Castle County Office of Economic Development, which focuses on supporting the county’s innovation ecosystem by “prioritizing new job creation through entrepreneurship, startup companies, existing small businesses and providing a predictable land use planning process”
New Castle County has kept a low profile in economic development efforts in the past couple of decades while being criticized for a byzantine land use process that came with the adoption of Unified Development Code.
More recently, county Land Use has worked to improve the process and has pointed to successful fast-track projects that brought jobs to the county.
