Coming UMKC innovation center to serve students, entrepreneurs
May 13, 2015 | Bobby Burch
![NixonPressConf[4]](https://startlandnews.tinythunder.dev/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NixonPressConf4.jpg "NixonPressConf[4]")
With funding shored up from private and public donors, the University of Missouri-Kansas City is planning to move ahead with its plan to build the Robert W. Plaster Free Enterprise Center to support students and entrepreneurs.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon shakes hands with UMKC Chancellor Leo E. Morton. Photo by Janet Rogers/UMKC.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced Tuesday that the state is allocating $7.4 million to the center, which represents half of the funding for the new $14.8 million building that will be built at 215 Volker Boulevard. The Robert W. Plaster Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation offered the initial private funds.
“The Free Enterprise Center at UMKC will provide greater opportunities for creativity and collaboration among students, faculty and businesses, and strengthen the Kansas City region’s position as a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship,” Gov. Nixon said in a release.
The prototyping and product development center will serve students, entrepreneurs and the larger business community with a variety of resources, including a lab, rapid prototyping equipment, 3D printers and a business incubator.
“This facility will support education and economic development across the board,” UMKC Chancellor Leo E. Morton said in a release. “It will help entrepreneurs, inventors and small business be more successful in their ventures. And students from middle school to graduate school will get a first-hand taste of entrepreneurship and become grounded in the discipline of innovation.”
Featured Business
2015 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
$2M in federal funds secured for Disney’s forgotten ‘cradle of Hollywood animation’ in KC
A decades-long effort to redevelop Walt Disney’s original Laugh-O-gram animation studios at 31st and Forest, along the Troost corridor, will receive $2 million in federal funding, as officially announced last week by Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II. The influx of funding should generate “momentum” to raise the remaining money needed to complete the project, said Gary…
KC’s Westside neighborhood awarded $1M from feds to reconnect community split by I-35
A newly announced $1 million grant is expected to help reestablish a Kansas City neighborhood that was cut off from itself and opportunity thanks to past transportation infrastructure decisions — part of a $1 billion plan to right what many call a decades-long wrong largely perpetrated against historic communities of color. In a first round…
‘Work to support our innovators is never done’: NXTUS leadership transition follows massive impact expansion
WICHITA — NXTUS, a nonprofit working to connect startup founders with community resources, capital and customers, on Tuesday announced a top-level leadership change while celebrating milestones in the rollout of its work to help innovators and entrepreneurs grow “companies of significance” in Kansas. Mary Beth Jarvis, who joined Wichita-based NXTUS as executive director in August 2019,…
KC restaurants await flyers at the new terminal; here’s what it took to get ready
Editor’s note: The following story was originally published by KCUR, Kansas City’s NPR member station, and a fellow member of the KC Media Collective. Click here to read the original story or here to sign up for KCUR’s email newsletter. When the new Kansas City International Airport terminal opens Tuesday, it’ll be a new chapter for more than 20 local businesses who…