In the second new-tenant announcement in as many weeks, our supporting member the NYSERDA Saratoga Technology + Energy Park (STEP)® has announced that The Radiant Store, an installer of solar-thermal hot-water systems, has become a new tenant at 10 Hermes Road at STEP. For the NYSERDA news release, click here.

Our supporting member the Stony Brook University Incubator Program has announced together with state Sen. Ken LaValle a $3.5 million grant to construct an 8,500-square-foot Agriculture Consumer Sciences Center at the Calverton Business Incubator. To read the university news release, click the first link above.

The grant from the legislatively budgeted Economic Development Assistance Program will permit regional producers of agricultural products and also vintners to have access to state-of-the-art facilities whey they can collaborate on processing issues with scientists at Stony Brook, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the NYS Small Business Development Center.

Calverton Business Incubator is a 15,680 square-foot facility opened in 2005 with a focus on aquaculture, agriculture and environmental technologies.

For the second year running, a national magazine contest features a nominee who was counseled by a student incubator affiliated with one of our member incubators in Syracuse.

This year the Inc. magazine "Cool College Start-Up" contest features Ryan Dickerson, a Syracuse University junior whose "bed-transforming pillow" company Rylaxing was incubated by the Couri Hatchery that is part of the same umbrella program (the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship) as is our member the South Side Innovation Center. To vote for Ryan's company, go here.

Last year a similar poll by Entrepreneur magazine included a different SU student whose company was counseled by the Student Sandbox at our supporting member the Syracuse Technology Garden.

To see a list of student incubators affiliated directly or indirectly with our member incubators, check this table.

Clough Harbour & Associates (CHA), a leading energy and environmental engineering services company headquartered in Albany, has become the newest tenant at our supporting member the NYSERDA Saratoga Technology + Energy Park (STEP)®. CHA will locate at STEP's 107 Hermes Road building. You can read the official NYSERDA press release here. 

Sen. Charles Schumer visited our member the Orange County Business Accelerator (OCBA) in New Windsor, to speak about bipartisan legislation he has sponsored that would grant tax breaks to small firms hiring those unemployed for more than 60 days.

Sen. Schumer's visit underlines how a business incubator often becomes the focal point for entrepreneurial energy and policy development in any community.

OCBA posts news items like this as part of its blog. You can follow recent blog posts from several of our members in the lower left-hand column of the BIA/NYS website or in context of other interesting feeds here or in more expanded form here.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has announced a $1.5 million award to our supporting member the Long Island High Technology Incubator at Stony Brook University to establish a new Clean Energy Business Incubation Program (CEBIP). Press releases are available from NYSERDA or the university.

The CEBIP program will provide comprehensive services both at the original LIHTI facility and at a new incubator to open this fall as part of the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center at the Stony Brook University Research and Development Park.

This award marks the fifth clean-energy incubator award that NYSERDA has made to one of our association's existing member incubators or in close partnership with one of our members. Others are listed here. 

The Cleantech Group, the investment-oriented research and advisory group on the cleantech industries, has named the Cleantech Center (a NYSERDA-sponsored clean-energy incubator at our supporting member the Tech Garden) as number 6 on its list of top 10 cleantech cluster organizations.

The citation links the Cleantech Center to the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Energy and Environmental Systems as key elements of the Central New York region's knowledge-based economic-development strategy. Congratulations to all involved!

 Business incubators and technology parks would play a key role in anchoring regional innovation clusters across New York State, according to a vision laid out in a report published recently by the Public Policy Institute (PPI), the research affiliate of the Business Council of New York State, Inc.

Entitled Transcending the Hamster Cage: Unfettering New York's Static Innovation Economy, the PPI report is available for download here with supporting data here.

The report includes both PPI's own recommendations and a series of personal essays, including a very interesting one signed by Alex Brownstein of Integrated Tissue Dynamics, LLC. Alex is the former manager of the incubator program at the SUNY Albany East Campus, and one of the original incorporators of this association.