Future Business Centre
About the Centre
The vision is to create a business innovation centre with a difference – to grow businesses that do good for the community and the environment.
The Future Business Centre will be an enterprise hub that demonstrates the possibilities for combining good business practice with the business of doing good. It will support start-up and early stage social and commercial businesses developing products that result in social or environmental benefits. The first spade was dug on 30 January 2012 and we plan for it to be operational in early 2013.
The Centre will help individuals and organisations to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges. Despite the prosperity of the Cambridge area, for some people a range of deep-seated problems remain – deprivation, low skills, homelessness, exclusion from work because of disability or ill-health. Through the Centre, Future Business will nurture social enterprises which use business approaches to address these challenges, offering affordable start-up space, business advice and access to funding.
At the same time, Cambridge is just beginning to demonstrate its potential as a hub of the ‘cleantech’ environmental business sector, and by creating a cluster of the most promising start-ups we can really help to accelerate their growth. In doing so, not only will environmental challenges be addressed but also many new job opportunities created. The newly formed Cambridge Cleantech membership organisation will be based at the Future Business Centre to help build this cluster. Finally, social and environmental businesses can have a lot in common, and we plan to explore the ways they can work together so that even greater impact is achieved.
What’s on offer for tenants?
The Future Business Centre will provide 35,000 square feet of affordable mixed office and workshop units and open-plan hot-desk space for individuals or organisations wanting to start up or to expand a social or environmental business.
Key features will be:
- Easy-in, easy-out terms
- On-site business support
- Co-location with other like-minded organisations,
- Networking facilitated by the design of the building
- Shared back-office services and equipment
‘The Hive’ development
This new permanent building will be part of ‘The Hive’ – a visionary new Education and Enterprise Park planned for North Cambridge. The Park contains three individual but related projects: SmartLIFE Low Carbon which opened in October 2011, SmartLIFE Eco-Homes Innovation Park and The Future Business Centre. The partners involved are Cambridge Regional College (CRC), Cambridgeshire County Council and Future Business.
Our fundraising campaign
We have secured planning permission and broke ground on 30 January 2012. The total project cost is just under £8M. Of this we have raised:
- £750k from EEDA to buy the site
- £2.78million of match funding from the European (ERDF) programme for low carbon business growth
- £1.15million from the proceeds of Allia Charitable Bonds purchased by TTP Group (£2.5M bond), ARM plc (£2.5M) and Abcam plc (£1M), as well as other individuals who support the project and the innovative funding mechanism we are using.
We have a building asset which we hope will contribute a substantial proportion of the balance, and require a further £1.7M to complete the full fundraising including fit-out.
If you would to support our campaign by making an investment in a charitable bond, please visit www.allia.org.uk/future-business-centre or contact Tim Jones on 0845 456 2431 or at tim@futurebusiness.co.uk.
