Creative Corridor launches start-up incubator from CCS

The Creative Corridor initiative is opening the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, an incubator for start-ups and creative-based firms, today.

The Detroit Creative Corridor Center occupied a few thousand square feet in the College of Creative Studies' A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education in New Center. The Detroit Creative Corridor Center will run its Creative Ventures Acceleration Program from the space, which will house 17 businesses this year. Among those new businesses are First Element Entertainment, a film and video production house, and Homeslice Clothing, a fashion line emphasizing organic and local materials.

"These businesses represent a pretty good cross-section of the creative economy and the creative class that is building in Detroit," says Matt Clayson, director of the Detroit Creative Corridor Center. "It has everything from the digital to the build environment side."

Most of the Creative Ventures Acceleration Program participants will take part in a year-long intensive incubation program that focuses on building up their business plans and mentoring to help them execute it. There is also a virtual portion of the program that allows the participants to take advantage of the resources but a less-intense pace.

The idea is to help populate the lower Woodward corridor with growing start-ups and creatively inclined businesses that create jobs and help staunch Michigan's brain drain. "If we keep populating 6-10 businesses per year into the neighborhood, before you know it, it fills the gaps that are here," Clayson says.

Source: Matt Clayson, director of the Detroit Creative Corridor Center
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.