Three years, one month and over $2 million later, Accelerate Augusta, the city’s new microenterprise center, is now open.
Several local business leaders and dignitaries gathered at the 600 Building Friday morning to cut the ribbon on the new business incubator, a project that has been under construction since August of last year.
James Heffner, a member of Accelerate Augusta’s board of directors, traced the beginnings of the project to a meeting he had in December of 2021 with then-Augusta Tech president Jermaine Whirl and Downtown Development Authority (DDA) director Margaret Woodard.
The three had discussed the possibility of developing a kind of training center to help local small businesses cultivate the means to “minimize their vulnerability,” he said, particularly amid the hardships they endured during and after the height of the Covid pandemic.
“The struggle went beyond the short-term survival. It exposed new structural differences,” said Heffner, citing lack of capital, dependable supply chains and “coordinated support systems” during Covid.
The DDA, he continued, became one of the “go-to agencies” for businesses seeking help to navigate monies available to them in the form of loans and grants.
“What we learned is that many existing businesses didn’t have adequate reserves, resources, back office operations,” Heffner said. “Needed to pivot their businesses and their business model, not only during the pandemic, but post the pandemic as well.”
The DDA managed to secure the $2.35 million in grant funds to develop the center, with advocacy from Sen. Raphael Warnock. Margaret Woodard, executive director of the DDA, expressed thanks to the city for its contributions, noting that a deal with the city led to Accelerate Augusta’s 20 year rent free lease on the I.M. Pei-designed building, and that the DDA allocated some $275,000 in SPLOST funds toward repairing damage from Hurricane Helene.
The building has been refurbished to include specialized offices for the center’s various programs, such as “The Launchpad,” for budding industrialists to pitch ideas and host events; or the “Innovation Classroom,” for workshops, roundtables and entrepreneurship classes.
“Right now, the next step is to come through the doors of Accelerate Augusta,” said the microenterprise center’s executive director Shaun Andrews to prospective businesses owners, stressing that its current goal is to build a “community of entrepreneurs, mentors and individuals” to “help inspire and promote business.”
Resources and classes offered at Accelerate Augusta can help up-and-coming enterprisers acclimate to the processes of starting, maintaining and improving their businesses.
“You know, we are committed to entrepreneurship a lot, but we don’t know it,” said Andrews. “Our mothers may do hair in the kitchen, friends may fix cars outside, but they don’t have the process. We see the passion a lot, but we don’t see the process. We’re going to help to align that passion to the process and help folks become successful.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering general reporting for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com
