Downtown Chattanooga’s planned Innovation District. Chattanooga’s Innovation District, which encompasses a variety of startup businesses, venture funds and business assistance programs in a 140-acre part of downtown, has helped spur more than $700 million of new retail, office and residential projects in Chattanooga’s central city, The New York Times said Tuesday.
In a real estate story headlined “Chattanooga’s Innovation District Beckons to Young Entrepreneurs,” the Times said the 90,000-square foot Edney Building at Market and 11th Streets has developed into a gateway to the city’s growing entrepreneurial business community, which is aided by America’s fastest internet connections provided by EPB.
“The Edney Center is a crucible for advancing their ideas,” New York Times reporter Keith Schneider said.”Chattanooga has leveraged its lighning-fast broadband connections to develop a tech scene in its recently designed innovation district.”
The Enterprise Center, CoLab, Society of Work and more than a dozen business startups have located in the Edney Building for low-cost, shared office space and coaching and other business assistance. Two blocks away, EPB’s headquarters anchors the fastest citywide internet service in America capable of delivering up to 10 gigabits-per-second web speed. Another couple of blocks away Lamp Post is helping to nurture 10 logistics companies as part of their inaugural class of the Dynamo accelerator program.
Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, who pushed for the creation of the Innovation District and helped a group of local investors known as Talon Partners to acquire the Edney Building from TVA to anchor the district, told the Times that the city is creating “an ecosystem for business development.
“We are promoting access to state-of-the-art broadband and recruiting entrepreneurs with the skills to use it,” Berke said.