It will provide space for budding entrepreneurs and other services.
Frederick, Md (KM) A new headquarters for the Frederick Innovative Technology Center, Incorporated, is expected to open next year. A groundbreaking ceremony on the new facility at 321 Ballenger Center Drive was held last week.
Kathie Callahan Brady, President and CEO of FITCI, says this new center will provide space for entrepreneurs to launch their new businesses and so much more. “We have a community aspect to it from an educational teaching lab as well that we can use internally, but we’ll also make it available to the local area as well,” she says. “So we can get more students involved. We can get more universities involved.”
It’s a two-story building with each floor totaling 40.000 square feet. Brady says about one-quarter of the space will be for start up companies. She says most of these young companies are mostly in life sciences and technology. The remainder of the building will be used for the educational teaching lab.
But Brady says FITCI does more for these entrepreneurs than provide space for their start-up companies. “We have very successful CEO’s that help advise our companies. And we have lots of resource partners who help as well. We have a pretty active community of individuals,” she says.
FITCI currently occupies space at Metropolitan Court. in Frederick.
FITCI has been around for about 20 years, and Brady says 90-percent of these businesses which started out with FITCI have been successful on their own. “But I believe that’s because we surround each of our early start ups with a successful CEO. And it’s that level of advice, that level of accountably, and that level of just helping one another in collaboration is part of the reason we’re having higher success levels,” she says.
Brady notes that the success rates for start up businesses are “pretty low.”
The new FITCI headquarters will be known as the EDGE@321. “What we do is hard, but we also need to have fun with it,” says Brady. “So it’s kind of like hanging out on the edge, the EDGE@321, and it stands for enabling the development and growth for entrepreneurs.”
She says the new facility is expected to open its doors in the spring of 2023.
By Kevin McManus