Eighteen years ago, the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce and Hamilton County officials concluded that the Hamilton County Business Development Center should be sold and a new, modern incubator created.
The proposal, titled “A Strategic Approach to Enhancing the Economic Impact of Hamilton County’s Business Development Center,” said the current building on the North Shore was aging and “limited the potential of the BDC in fostering the growth and development of businesses requiring access to high technology infrastructure due to the high cost of retrofitting the facility.”
The 16-page document said, “Repositioning the Business Development Center as a technology incubator in a new location with flexibility and space for the growth of these businesses will enable the Center to become the catalyst for the growth of technology based businesses to drive prosperity and grow jobs for the Chattanooga area.”
Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp sent the chamber’s 2008 proposal to all current chamber members Monday, along with a two-page letter seeking support for his vision to move the incubator to the Franklin-Roberts Future Ready Center in downtown’s Golden Gateway area.
“It is an important document for the current debate around the BDC because it makes clear that the direction Hamilton County is pursuing today,” he wrote in the letter, “is aligned closely with recommendations previously advanced by both county leadership and the Chamber itself, then under the leadership of Tom Edd Wilson.”