ChicoStart
|
Location |
Chico, CA |
|
|---|---|---|
|
Project Name |
BRIC Resilience and Recovery Project (BRIC-RR) |
|
|
Award Amount |
Federal Share |
Local Match |
|
$238,712 |
$59,678 |
Chicostart will use EDA funding to address critical economic and resiliency challenges faced by the Butte County region including the coronavirus pandemic and refugees from nearly 19,000 homes following the Camp Fire in nearby Paradise, California.
First, Chicostart will develop the Butte Regional Innovation Cluster (BRIC) Ecosystem — a network of more than 25 leaders from industry, local jurisdictions and organizations, universities, regional entrepreneurs and innovators, private/public capital sources. Chicostart will leverage the BRIC Ecosystem to deploy the BRIC Resilience and Recovery (BRIC-RR) project, a resiliency-focused ecosystem + incubator / accelerator program that will leverage regional innovation and strengths, enhance innovation capacity, develop an innovation/commercialization pipeline, and improve pandemic and disaster resilience through regional economic diversification.
Strongly focused on locally relevant, resilient economic sectors including advanced agriculture, biotechnology, and biomaterials, BRIC-RR will screen and select 30 entrepreneurs, innovators, and small businesses to provide an intensive, five-month innovation, acceleration, and commercialization support program.
When complete, the project would engage a 25-plus member BRIC Ecosystem, enroll and graduate two cohorts of entrepreneurs and innovators (30 total); develop more than 20 new jobs during the project and 75 new high-paying jobs two years after completion; improve regional economic diversity; support struggling opportunity zones; and develop a replicable, repeatable entrepreneur and economic development model that Chicostart can subsequently replicate across California’s Far North region.