The City of Estevan has recently received $518,000 in federal funding for one of the Economic Development Board’s initiatives aimed at helping entrepreneurs in Estevan with startups and their existing businesses. This grant will help the city to establish a business incubator.
“This funding is intended to develop a facility, right now we are calling it a business incubator, but we haven’t finalized exactly what this facility would look like,” said economic development co-ordinator Dwight (Fitz) Bramble.
The objective of the project is to provide support for businesses in Estevan that are already operating and to encourage new startups, particularly small businesses.
The facility that the city announced on in April will help new and existing businesses to develop by providing services, office space and other supports. The initiative was suggested by the economic development board of the City of Estevan, as part of its quest to strengthen and grow the business environment in Estevan.
“It’s going to be an incubator providing services, co-working space, whatever it is, we are still working on finalizing some of that,” said Bramble.
And to find out what will serve the existing and future entrepreneurs of Estevan the best, the city launched a survey. They are asking the public to provide feedback on what they want the facility to look like and what the facility should feature.
“When we talk about supporting businesses, we use the word ‘support’ in a very broad way. Whether it’s helping businesses to grow, whether it’s helping businesses that are struggling a little bit to become a little bit stronger, whether it’s to encourage businesses who are in the home-based environment to move out of their homes and get bigger, whether it’s offering services to businesses that they may not have readily available, setting as workshops, bringing them up to date on new realities in the business environment, those types of things,” said Bramble.
The survey will run until the end of September. The city hopes that a lot of people will respond to it so that they can get their input as to what this final facility would look like.
Bramble said that the city plans to have it going by the end of 2019 or early 2020. There is still a lot of work to be done and the timing is quite “ambitious,” but besides the needs of the community, they are now also bound by the funding agreement.
“We have some dates and some timelines that we also have to meet,” said Bramble.
The federal funds are designed for a two–year period and require the project to develop accordingly with the application. And when the project is established the city will have to come up with other funding sources.
“Within these two years, we hope to establish partnerships and different sources of funding. And hopefully the way that it’s set up and operated, it will be able to sustain itself through revenue generation and stuff like that,” said Bramble.
He also noted that the city is currently discussing partnership opportunities with a couple of businesses trying to find corporate partners.
“I can’t disclose who they are yet, but there are some businesses that are interested in being a part of the project and maybe sponsoring, whether it’s sponsoring in terms of in-kind support or cash support,” said Bramble.
The location of the facility will also depend on the agreed vision and the needs of the business community it will serve.
The survey can be found at the city website in a news article called Let’s talk business growth.
