nothin Elm City Pulls Down Innovation Grant | New Haven Independent

Elm City Pulls Down Innovation Grant

Markeshia Ricks

Harp flanked by the “innovation team”

A new $50,000 grant from the state was hailed Wednesday as a step toward putting the Elm City on the world map as an innovative place.

Elected officials gathered with the leaders of New Haven’s technology sector at City Hall Wednesday to announce that the city was one of 12 communities in the state to receive a CTNext” planning grant from the Innovation Places program.

New Haven’s tech sector turned out for the announcement

The grant allows the city to conduct a strategic planning process to better understand the relevant emerging conditions, risks and opportunities they face; to assess the capabilities the community needs; and to plan actions to leverage those capabilities,” according to a press release from the CTNext website.

That planning sets the stage for New Haven to pursue even more grant money in the future to implement the plans it develops to recruit, attract and expand the technology sector of the local economy, Mayor Toni Harp said.

We want new companies, new ideas and budding entrepreneurs to gather in New Haven and interact,” she said. This funding will help New Haven provide a more fertile ground for those interactions. New Haven already has a list of top shelf technology companies with global impact. Grey Wall [software], SeeClickFix and Digital Surgeons are among the few that instantly come to mind, and we’re eager for that team list to grow.”

Looney: We’re returning to our innovation roots.

State Sen. Martin Looney, who sponsored the bill provides the money for the grant, said that innovation and entrepreneurship are the new direction of the state’s economic strategy and New Haven leads the way.

Up to this point, our efforts have focused on supporting existing businesses and attracting businesses to locate here,” he said. We’ve rebooted CTNext and reallocated existing funding to focus also on supporting new homegrown, Connecticut start-up companies because studies have shown that job growth occurs not necessarily in large companies, not necessarily in small companies, but in new companies that have potential. That is where growth most likely occurs.”

Looney said the grant provides communities like New Haven resources to plan and develop significant centers of innovation and concentrated nodes of entrepreneurs, tech talent support organizations, and research institutes in dense, walkable, transit oriented, mixed use neighborhoods. Of all the 169 towns in the state, New Haven boast the greatest numbers of entrepreneurs and start up companies today,” he said.

Nemerson.

City Economic Development Administrator Matt Nemerson said that he believes the Elm City has the greatest chance of all the 169 towns in the state to ultimately be designated an Innovative Place,” because it is the natural center of technology in the state. He said as the city positions itself asa tech hub it will be looking to not just be the home of firms associated with Yale University and Yale School of Medicine but the home of businesses with such global reach that New Haven can compete nationally and internationally.

As we go forward, we look forward to this team getting the next round grants, which we hope will be in the millions of dollars, and that we create more maker spaces, more co-working spaces with branding opportunities that challenge New York and Boston,” he said. But to tell Shanghai and Moscow and San Diego, if you’re looking for a place in the northeast, this is the place.”

The next phase of the Innovation Places program is the competitive implementation grant application, which will begin in November 2016, and awardees will be announced in June 2017, according to the press release from CTNext.

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