The Twin Lakes Library System has received a $50,000 grant aimed at creating a business incubator in downtown Milledgeville. 

The grant comes from the Community Foundation of Central Georgia’s Knight Foundation Fund, and Stephen Houser, director of the Twin Lakes Library System, says the grant will help the library expand in one of its key mission areas of aiding the community in workforce development.

“They (the Community Foundation) like to see the work that libraries can do in this field,” Houser told The Union-Recorder. “There are more public libraries than McDonalds in this country, and there’s a lot of opportunities for us to foster workforce development. We help with resumés and help people fill out job applications all the time because a lot of those are online-only so it’s kind of building on the work that we already do.”

Business incubators in general help startup companies in their early stages by giving them space to work out of at a reduced rate and other resources while they work towards the goal meeting sufficient growth so they may eventually go out on their own. Houser says the local business incubator will do just that in offering things office and conference space as well as access to the library’s high-speed fiberoptic internet connection. 

“We’ll work with people that are interested and talk about whether it’s a good fit for them,” said Houser. “One of the things we’ll offer at the business incubator is a reduced lease rate. Generally business incubators tend to have that reduced rate for only a couple of years and then the business can go out on their own. It’s kind of a good way to get people started up.”

The local library system director stated that the space will likely be geared toward a business in the service industry such as a marketing, public relations, or IT firm since space is a limited commodity, so housing a warehouse or production company would not be possible. As for the where, the Milledgeville City Hall annex has been targeted by city and library officials as the future home for the business incubator, though some renovations would need to be made first.

“We’re still working on finalizing funding for the construction project in the annex,” Houser said. “We have a couple requests in with the state legislature to get full funding for that. We should know in about May whether we got fully funded, and then construction can begin July 1. Once that’s completed the business incubator will be ready to go, so we’re hoping for fall or winter later this year and if it gets pushed back early 2019.”

Houser added that although the incubator could only house one business at a time, classes will also be offered to the public teaching business basics like marketing, financial management, and social media strategies. An application process that will include open houses events and interest meetings will begin closer to the time renovations to the City Hall annex are completed.

“It’s something that we see being a long-term project… Once we get the start-up funding we should be pretty good to go. It’s going to pay for a lot of the fixtures and furnishings for the space. It’s going to pay for some of the special programming and advertising that we do for it. Our goal is for it to be self-sustaining, and we hope to get that within the first year or two… We’re really excited about this project, and we’re hopeful that we can get started as soon as possible,” Houser said.

The Community Foundation of Central Georgia was founded in 1993 by citizens interested in strengthening communities and serves 21 counties across the region.