The Five Points Association, The Boyd Foundation and GrowCo game together on July 12 to announce the opening of a new community innovation center in Five Points at 711 Saluda Ave.
The Boyd Foundation’s Community Innovation Center, led by volunteers Chris Heivly, co-founder of MapQuest, and Joe Queenan, interim executive director of GrowCo, was created to help entrepreneurs grow their small businesses in Columbia.
“The data will show in a population this size — (Columbia) should have about 5,000 high-tech, high-growth entrepreneurs,” Queenan said. “We would probably just capture maybe 20 to 30 entrepreneurs. We are so far off the market.”
Despite the location not being open yet, Queenan and Heivly have already started working with innovators weekly and have visited students in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at USC to discuss getting involved with the center. Heivly said the innovation center will be able to offer experience that the university is unable to teach students in a classroom setting.
“I believe that in any given population, especially in college, about 10% of the students, some single digit percentage students are entrepreneurs ... but they’re not going to figure out how to scratch that itch or build those muscles inside the university,” Heivly said. “You can’t really teach entrepreneurship — you have to live (it).”
As for why they decided to choose Five Points, a location known for its night life and bars, Queenan said that the area also consists of great artists, creating a collaboration between artists and incoming innovators.
Once new businesses start to form through the center, Queenan said he hopes that they will start to take up spaces in Five Points, slowly transforming the area.
“We’ve got the coffee shop, we’ve got the fancy restaurant off the street, you got everything you need that a lot of other communities don’t actually have when they’re starting from scratch,” Queenan said. “I think we will earn the change in their reputation.”
For Heivly, the main concern for new businesses in Columbia right now is the disconnect in the entrepreneur community.
“You need a tribe or a community around you to help you make better decisions than bad decisions. And so the first thing you need to do is connect people, and that’s why this space is so important,” Heivly said.
In a press release from July 12, the Five Points Association said the Boyd Foundation, an organization focused on educational programs and the quality of life for citizens in Columbia, donated $1 million dollars to fund the center for its first two years.
Major Daniel Rickenmann also attended the announcement in Five Points and said he was excited about the center giving an opportunity for the community to continue to grow and work together.
“We are the capital city. We should be the number one city in the state of South Carolina. Our sister cities are being grown and now we have an opportunity,” Rickenmann said. “This is one step forward.”