Partnership between Adams Hub and Carson City municipality sought

Expired contracts of professionals operating Adams Hub, a business and entrepreneurial innovation incubator in downtown Carson City, has prompted the Hop and Mae Adams Foundation (HMAF) to approach the municipality of Carson City with a partnership proposal that includes grant funds to take the local incubator to its next phase, an HMAF press release stated.

With those contracts expiring, HMAF has determined that Adams Hub is ready to go into its next phase of operation.

In keeping with HMAF policy to measure its efforts and vet the merit of its actions and expenditures of the past, as well as partner with those it can, HMAF has made an offer to Carson City to partner with the city and roll its incubator into the city’s comprehensive economic development strategy.

The shared thought between the city and HMAF is that there would be some economy of scale, that the city could bring some of its resources and structure to help take the incubator to the next level, including assisting existing businesses in the Carson City community to overcome some of the hurdles and barriers existing businesses in the area may have.

HMAF believes Adams Hub has been a valued effort and wishes to see it continued and expanded.

HMAF has offered the city a total grant of over $1 million for the next three years to continue the incubator and those projects deemed by city leaders to be of value to the community.

That $1 million is comprised of a $420,000 three-year lease donation to the city on the incubator building to continue the Adams Hub (as valued per a broker’s price opinion). It also includes $600,000 in cash, allocated over the next three years to cover the cost of operations, professionals of the city’s choosing, and other services as the city deems necessary.

At the end of that three-year period, the city and HMAF will then review the value of the combined efforts and adjust as the parties agree. If the city chooses not to take the grant offered by HMAF, Adams Hub will then continue in operation as HMAF then sees fit to run the incubator for its next phase.

HMAF has deemed it is inappropriate to dictate to the city who it must hire in the grant to continue the Adams Hub. HMAF does require, however, that the incubator continue and as the Adams Hub. HMAF would like to publicly extend its gratitude to all the many professionals, many who donated their time.

In January of 2012, Wall Street listed Carson City, Nevada as the least likely city in America to pull out of the recession.

Though taking that with a grain of salt, the Hop and Mae Adams Foundation (HMAF) did some due diligence on how it could best use its resources for the benefit of the community, without duplicating efforts of others.

Concluding a city-centric incubator was its best present option, HMAF engaged Long Performance Advisors out of Indiana to help HMAF set up an incubator in Carson City.

HMAF remodeled the Steward Title Building, putting extensive incubator-specific improvements into that building.

In February of 2014, Adams Hub opened.

HMAF contracted with some professionals to operate the incubator. The concept was to run the incubator for two years and then measure its value to the community.

The professionals involved were given a lot of latitude to experiment with various efforts in the community that were tied to the incubator. Based on the time delay for some of the metrics, the contract with the professionals was extended until March 2018.

Special thanks are extended to Miya MacKenzie, the Director of Adams Hub for its four start-up years.