The James City County Board of Supervisors and Williamsburg City Council voted unanimously this week to support running the county’s business incubator as a regional effort.
The incubator opened in James City County in 2007 at 5300 Palmer Lane with the designation of “incubating” small businesses that wanted to open in the county. Each business enters into a three-year program and, once it graduates the incubator, must relocate within the county for five years. As a regional effort, the businesses will be able to locate anywhere in the Historic Triangle.
Now, each locality will pay a portion of the $103,500 annual operating costs, with the incubator being financed in part by the graduated businesses. The aim is to make the incubator self-sufficient.
Taxes received by the locality of a graduated business should give “an amount equal to Business, Professional, and Occupational License (BPOL) taxes, local sales taxes and taxes on machinery and tools and other business personal property (but not real estate taxes) received from any ‘graduating’ business” for a period of five years.
At Council’s meeting Thursday, Economic Development Authority Chair Monty Mason said the regional incubator plan was “a really great example of the area working together.” He said the plan supports local entrepreneurship while leveraging “intellectual capital” at The College of William & Mary, which manages the incubator.
The York County Board of Supervisors voted to run the incubator regionally at its Nov. 20 meeting. The incubator will be regionally operated starting Jan. 1, 2013.
Read a previous article on the topic here.
