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'Spark District' To Drive Jacksonville, Fla., Innovation

The district is a permanent place for startups and technology entrepreneurs since national attention to Jacksonville’s startup scene has increased in the past five years.

(TNS) -- Jacksonville’s startups and entrepreneurs now have their own area of downtown to concentrate on cultivating their own business ecosystem.

The so-called “Spark District” announced Thursday is a newly established business innovation area along the Northbank of downtown near the Riverwalk. It’s generally near where the annual One Spark crowdfunding festival has been held off Laura Street for the past three years in April.

The innovation district is the concept of local entrepreneur Ed Baldwin. He wanted to develop a permanent place for startups and technology entrepreneurs rather than having them be limited to the few days of the One Spark festival.

“The Spark District will attract entrepreneurs, artists and startups to downtown, creating a central point of focus in Jacksonville for innovation,” said Baldwin, founder of the tech startup Profile Gorilla.

Baldwin was a “creator” at One Spark and showcased a software management company he started in 2013 to provide organizational support for vendor and supply contracting companies. He said the Spark District really is about promotion of startups in an area about 15 square blocks running from the Jacksonville Landing north to Hemming Park where many entrepreneurs are already established.

The announcement of the district was made in Hemming Park on Thursday evening.

“I think a lot of people who are entrepreneurs think that you start a business out of your house,” Baldwin said. “What we’re trying to do is let people know that there are places downtown where you can work from downtown; you can start your business downtown and be surrounded with people that are just like you. So, you’re surrounded by other entrepreneurs.”

One Spark officials and the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville helped provide support for the Spark District and they’ve started a website, sparkdistrict.com, to inform entrepreneurs about the grants and connections available for startups moving downtown. The district will be managed by several groups that have proliferated since the first One Spark festival two and a half years ago.

One Spark co-founder and CEO Elton Rivas said designating an area a district may not seem like such a big deal, but it’s a critical step to hooking in an entrepreneurial community.

“Branding it as such puts a beacon out to other entrepreneurs in the community and outside of the region and says, hey, if you want to be part of that [downtown] density, here’s a real good physical presence of a place where you can go and do that with your business,” Rivas said. “It’s a definitive branding campaign that showcases the activity that’s happening.”

There is no specific zoning or government designation for the Spark District. It’s more of a marketing concept.

Downtown Vision’s CEO Jake Gordon said it is the ideal place for a growing community of entrepreneurs since national attention to Jacksonville’s startup scene has increased in the past five years mostly due to the One Spark festival, which drew an estimated 320,000 people to the event downtown in April.

“The urban core is a natural fit for entrepreneurs and innovators,” Gordon said. “Districts like these are a proven model for job creation and economic development in cities across the country.”

Gordon said the Spark District is analogous to another Jacksonville district known as The Elbow. That’s an entertainment and dining area just to the south running mainly along Bay Street where nightclubs and restaurants have been flourishing in recent years.

“An entertainment district is a known commodity for a downtown area,” Gordon said. “There are these [networking] collisions that people have together when the entrepreneurial community is there. That’s what we’re trying to foster.

“In Jacksonville, we’re trying to say if you’re an entrepreneur starting up a business in tech or otherwise, we want you to think of downtown as the best place to be,” Gordon said.

©2015 The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, Fla.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.