A grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony took place Monday morning at the corner of Capitol and Lee streets for the University of Charleston’s Downtown Innovation Hub, a business accelerator location designed to help small businesses scale up and grow.

“We’re going to be working with existing businesses that have kind of plateaued in terms of their performance,” said University of Charleston President Marty Roth. “Through training, workshops, networking, advising, coaching, co-working space and community events we will give them the knowledge, tools and network that they need to help them accelerate their growth, increase their revenues and create more jobs.”

Roth said seven businesses will be part of the Hub’s inaugural cohort.

“They will be starting with their first training workshop this afternoon,” he said.

One of those businesses is Atlas Prediction Control in Charleston.

Madhur Bedre founded the company on Valentine’s Day 2019. Prior to that, Bedre worked with Dow Chemical as a process automation manager gaining broad experience in industrial automation. Bedre is a chemical engineer with a master’s degree from West Virginia University.

“Now I am looking for expansion and looking to grow, so I am very excited for my business to be in the first cohort,” Bedre said. “They have a number of tools I can use. I’m really excited about the diversity of the cohort. We are an engineering consultancy. We work in the process control area, which basically means it’s chemical industrial automation. We work on software to automate the chemical plants and this opportunity will help us grow.”

The University of Charleston’s new Downtown Innovation Hub opened on July 10. The DIH purpose is to help small businsess grow through a nine month Business Accelerator program, meant to foster economic opportunities, create jobs and generate private investment.

Dave Ramsburg, executive director of innovation for the UC Downtown Innovation Hub, said the businesses in the first cohort range from three years old to 100 years old.

“Our goal in putting these cohorts together is to have a variety of businesses involved from different backgrounds, different industries. We’re really looking for diversity among our clientele and we definitely achieved that with this first cohort,” he said. “We’re not just for young pups here. We are interested in helping any business that is is experiencing some struggle and some barriers to growth.”

Roth said the innovation hub, which is in the former Chesapeake Bagel Bakery location, has been in development for a couple years.

“COVID slowed us down a little bit, but we conducted a feasibility study at the beginning of the decade that helped us really understand the entrepreneurial ecosystem and where additional resources were needed to support small business growth,” he said. “That led us to the design and development of this space.”

Roth says it was an externally funded project.

“We received about $1.59 million from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, and some matching funds from the City of Charleston [$247,531] as well as the Benedum Foundation [$150,000]. It’s about $1.9 to $2 million in startup funding,” he said. “This is now an opportunity for the University of Charleston to expand what we do to a really important new audience, the small business community here in Charleston and in the Kanawha Valley.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who was in attendance, said she was proud to secure funding for the project.

“This is an accelerator and not an incubator,” she said. “The University of Charleston has so many amazing resources to share with businesses here in the city and across Kanawha County. I’m looking forward to seeing the growth that will result from businesses partnering with the [Downtown Innovation Hub] for years to come, as well as the example this can set for the rest of our state.”

Pat Graney, who is on UC’s board of trustees, said the project has been “enthusiastically embraced” from its inception.

“We are excited to see this team’s vision come to fruition in this beautiful new addition to the university and the city of Charleston,” he said. “We continue to be committed to be Charleston’s university.”

Charleston Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin called the Hub another great addition to downtown.

“We recently build a new park downtown, the very first business improvement district in the city of Charleston started and downtown investment is happening,” she said. “Now we have this warm and comforting space downtown to support our business community.”

For more on the Downtown Innovation Center, visit https://www.ucwv.edu/innovation/dih/.