A new business incubator is coming to town that will house startups launched on school grounds.
The Institute of Marine & Environmental Technology will be opening up a 4,300-square-foot incubator in Baltimore's Inner Harbor at the Christopher Columbus Center this January. A small space that will have 26 offices and cubicles that average $26 per square foot, IMET is expected to help attract new businesses to Baltimore.
The space soon to be occupied by the incubator has been available for rent by startups, but IMET hasn't been successful in attracting renters. Now transforming into an incubator equipped with business benefits, Nick Hammond, an assistant director at IMET hopes to secure more tenants for the newly revamped space.
IMET is a joint University System of Maryland research institute made up of a partnership between three schools: University of Maryland Baltimore County; University of Maryland, Baltimore; and University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. They collaborate "to advance research and commercialize technology," according to Baltimore Business Journal, and focus on the institution's specific interest areas: economic development, the environment and health care.
It seems as if the universities have control over which businesses with school ties are accepted into the incubator, as leases are handled by UMBC. Whether this means that the institutions offer price incentives (i.e. lower rent costs) to talented student entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas they want to be known for helping grow into a reality is not yet known.
