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Columbia downtown incubator gets first firm, Upstate company to expand operations

Submitted by: Natalia Muska on Feb 11, 2010 at 2:00 pm Tagged with: Immedion, SCRA Source: http://www.thestate.com/business/story/1152985.html

An Upstate data security, storage and recovery firm will be the first tenant in a new business incubator in downtown Columbia.

Immedion, founded in Greenville in 2006, will expand its operations to the 73,000-square-foot brick warehouse at 1000 Catawba St., across Assembly Street from USC's Swearingen Engineering Center.

The expansion will be announced today at a groundbreaking for the S.C. Research Authority-USC Innovation Center.

SCRA USC Innovation Center
The Columbia facility has 8,000 square feet of office space and 65,000 square feet of warehouse space and could host 10 to 15 companies.

The center will be larger than other incubators in the Midlands and will be the last step for high-tech startups before they move to their own facilities.

Today's announcement "helps expand a knowledge-based company," SCRA chief executive Bill Mahoney said. "It's the kind of company we are looking for."

Immedion will build a 5,000-square-foot data center in the building and hire 15 employees, doubling the size of its present staff, CEO Frank Mobley said.

"It will give us a second footprint," he said. "It's in the center of the state and gives us access to other areas of the state."

SCRA was created in 1983 by the General Assembly with $500,000. It has since become a global, independent, nonprofit juggernaut whose charge is to help South Carolina grow high-tech, knowledge-based companies.

The Innovation Centers will charge new businesses about 50 percent to 60 percent of market rate for space.

The program provides grants and capital for new high-tech businesses, then makes money for other projects, in part, through stock ownership when those companies become successful. No taxpayer money will be used to build the state incubators, Mahoney said.