Bruce Lazenby at OCRI’s new Little Italy headquarters.
Budding entrepreneurs could begin moving into Centretown in December with the city’s first-ever business “incubator” scheduled to open at the beginning of the month, says a leading Ottawa business organization.
The Ottawa Centre for Regional Innovation is moving its headquarters from the city’s west end to Little Italy, says CEO Bruce Lazenby. The new office will combine all of OCRI’s regular services, including the Entrepreneurship Centre, an OCRI-owned resource centre for entrepreneurs currently housed at city hall.
The business-nurturing site will offer space for about 25 aspiring entrepreneurs at a time.
As the host of Ottawa’s first ever Ottawa Entrepreneur Week last week, OCRI officials said there’s a growing entrepreneurial community in the making.
Participants squeezed in shoulder-to-shoulder at the opening reception Nov. 14 at the Preston Street Heart & Crown, just a block away from the organization’s new building on Aberdeen Street.
“There are a lot of people that think this is a government town, and while we’ve got a lot of government offices here, there are a lot of entrepreneurs out there,” says Lazenby.
The bulk of clients using OCRI's counselling services come from the suburbs of the city, but many Centretown entrepreneurs already use their resources, says Carole Lair, a centre business adviser.
“Entrepreneurs like to go places where it’s cool,” says Lazenby,and Centretown has that “it” factor.
Tim O’Neil launched his business, First Aid by Paramedics, less than a year ago with the Entrepreneurship Centre’s help. Now, he holds first-aid workshops at the Gladstone Sports and Health Centre and is planning to expand to Toronto in January, he says.
Although he’s faced challenges networking and marketing in the area, there is a strong community of entrepreneurs to be found, he says. And the centre has helped him make connections.
“They kind of guide you towards making your dreams come true,” he says.
Ottawa residents are loyal to their local businesses, which makes it possible for entrepreneurs to thrive, says Lair.
This is good news at a time of impending federal job cuts – especially in Centretown, where a large proportion of public servants currently work.
Over the last two months, there’s even been a push from the federal government for the Entrepreneurship Centre to give workshops to government employees, says Lair.
Although she couldn’t say which departments she’s made presentations to, Lair says her workshops have been for soon-to-be retirees and people whose jobs might be axed in the near future.
Although OCRI won’t be marketing any programs specifically to ex-public service workers, the Entrepreneurship Centre is a great place for them to start, says Lazenby.
He says he’s also been in contact with president of the Treasury Board, Tony Clement, to talk about moving public service workers into the private sphere.
“In government, there are a number of groups right now that are writing software … and what they’re building is the basis of a product,” says Lazenby.
“So if we can take those 20 or 30 people and take them out of government … we can actually get them to start a company and they can sell their product to companies and to the government.”
Although OCRI has almost everything prepared to move into the new Little Italy location, it won’t hold an open house until January, he says.
The organization’s move to Centretown follows a similar downtown relocation by the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce, which recently moved from a west-end site to a new Somerset Street headquarters.