The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle has published a comprehensive roundup of all four upstate incubator complexes owned, redeveloped, managed, or operated by our member Mancuso Business Development Group. Click on the previous link for the full article. The featured facilities are: the Harrison Center in Lockport, the High Falls Business Center in Rochester, the Geneva Enterprise Development Center, and the company's home-base, the Harvester-Swann Centers in Batavia. Our congratulations to the Mancuso Group on this powerful recognition of their impact on business-formation upstate, in both the Finger Lakes and Western New York regions.

In a recent article, the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal highlights Gourmet World/ GiftsWish.com, a seller of gourmet foods and gift basket. The company is one of the early tenants of Harrison Place, one of several incubators owned or managed by our member Mancuso Business Development Group. The Mancuso Group manages Harrison Place for its owner, Greater Lockport Development Corp. According to the article, Gourmet World currently employs between three and eight people, and plans to grow to 35.

The Community Test Kitchen that is collocated with our member South Side Innovation Center was highlighted as an aid to the "local food revolution," in a recent feature in the Daily Orange, the campus newspaper at Syracuse University. Both the test kitchen and the Innovation Center incubator are programs of the university's Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship.

The Batavia Industrial Center, the flagship incubator of our member Mancuso Business Development Group, is offering a $250 rent discount for tenants completing one of two entrepreneurship courses offered at SUNY Genesee Community College. These courses are themselves eligible for a $500/semester "emerging entrepreneur scholarship" through the Finger Lakes region's Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) federal grant. For more information, see the latest newsletter from Mancuso Group, attached as a pdf. The Batavia facility of the Mancuso Group is generally recognized as America's first business incubator.

U-Start Business Incubator, which is situated in two converted structures at the southern border of Union College in Schenectady, has become a new member of the BIA/NYS. U-Start is an active technology incubation program in the Capital Region, directed by William "BJ" Johnson, who has extensive corporate and entrepreneurial experience in the computer and technology sectors. We warmly welcomed the program to membership.