The University at Buffalo School of Management's Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) has a new home in the UB Downtown Gateway. The CEL, which promotes business growth through leadership development and experiential learning, has moved from its former location in the Jacobs Executive Development Center (also known as the Butler Mansion) to newly renovated space in the Gateway at 77 Goodell Street.
"This strategic move brings the CEL into the heart of a region where innovation is flourishing," said Arjang Assad, dean of the UB School of Management. "The Gateway's proximity to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and UB's downtown research enterprises will allow easier collaboration between the CEL and the area's burgeoning life sciences companies."
The UB Downtown Gateway provides space for community outreach, service and research programs with a public orientation. These include the UB Office of Economic Engagement, UB Department of Family Medicine, the UB Regional Institute, UBMD, the physician practice plan of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and UB's Millard Fillmore College, which offers continuing education for adults.
Acquired by UB in 2007, the building was home to local clothing manufacturer M. Wile & Co. from 1924 to 1964, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The move is another step in CEL's plan to expand both the scope and reach of its activities, thanks in part to a $525,000 investment by UB and the School of Management.
"Both the new location and the additional funding are an outstanding opportunity to strengthen the center and take things to the next level for the benefit of the region's entrepreneurs," says Tom Ulbrich, executive director of the CEL.
Established in 1987, the CEL provides participants with individualized and interactive education in entrepreneurship. More than 900 CEL alumni employ more than 22,000 Western New Yorkers, and their businesses are worth more than $2 billion to the local economy. For more information, visit http://mgt.buffalo.edu/cel or contact the CEL at 716-885-5715 or mgt-cel@buffalo.edu.
This is great! It adds to the critical mass of innovation and entrepreneurship-related infrastructure on and around the southwest corner of BNMC -- the part of BNMC that is not only the gateway to downtown (from the perspective of those arriving on the 33), but the closest interface between BNMC, downtown, and Allentown.
And even more, this development reinforces that these innovation and entrepreneurship-related facilities don't have to all be in one building, but can be in a cluster of facilities that together could organically make up something like an Innovation Campus (or District or Corner -- call it what you will). BNMC is currently wringing its hands over the need to expand the Innovation Center, one of the factors that has caused them to eye demolition of the Trico Building which they feel (wrongly, in my view) is completely incompatible with the needs of their clients.
But the move of CEL near the Innovation Center, but not co-located in it, reinforces the idea of a different approach: expanding the Innovation Center into something like an Innovation Campus, rather than be constrained by the all-under-one-roof imperative. If you give that up, the answers for that growing cluster of related activities come much easier: Innovation Center clients that are growing and spinning off whose needs absolutely require new-build space could be accommodated on shovel-ready lots on immediately surrounding blocks. For others, there are hundreds of thousands of square feet of adaptable, rehabbable space in the Trico Building next door. In that scenario, the Trico Building then becomes a hub for a cluster of innovation and entrepreneurship facilities on adjacent blocks, with support facilities and amenities that all would share. Sort of like the role that Larkin Square and the ground floor of the Larkin at Exchange Building (and the upper floor conference rooms) play in the growing Larkin District -- they serve and enhance all the district.
By using those shared facilities in the Larkin District, and enjoying an inviting, highly walkable environment, people from all around the district run into each other and exchange ideas in an informal, creativity-boosting setting. Anyone who has been there has seen and experienced it. That's what BNMC wants for its Innovation Center clients, but they need to think outside the (single) box mindset they're in, where they think that to force that serendipity they need to keep everyone literally under the same roof. I don't know about you, but I'm more likely to have an engaging conversation with someone I run into in one of the Larkin District's great shared spaces, than with someone I encounter in the hallway on my way to the men's room.
Let's think about the expansive possibilities of having BNMC's southwest corner as a cluster of innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity -- with a rehabbed Trico Building as a hub and anchor for it all. This CEL move could be seen as a step in that direction. The potential value for the city and region that could be built thereby is huge.