Dallas

Business Incubator Coming to South Dallas

A new business incubator is coming to the Fair Park area of south Dallas.

Its goal is to connect budding entrepreneurs with the resources they need to get their ideas off the ground.

"There's just so many people in the neighborhood who have some great ideas. They even have businesses. They just don't have the capital," said George Battle III as he sat out front of the burned out dry cleaners that will be transformed into the Fair Park District Entrepreneur Center. "What we're going to show from this particular space is that south Dallas Fair Park supports its own."

Battle is the director of Zip Code Connection for South Dallas Fair Park. The organization will fund the center with a partnership with the United Methodist Church's North Texas Conference.

Located at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X Boulevard, the District, as it's known, will be a co-working space similar to the  Dallas Entrepreneur Center in the West End. Battle envisions community oriented businesses like a bakery and coffee shop that can provide jobs.

Chavela Garrett hopes to put roots of her florist business, Lafleur Affaire, down here.

"This is something the southern sector has been lacking for a long time," Garrett said, sitting in her living room, which doubles as her work space.

Garrett started her business last year. As she watched her daughter carefully clip the stems of brightly colored flowers she thinks about the opportunity the incubator will give her family.

"This is something I'm doing out of my home, so there's not a lot of money that I can put forward. But if I had investors, I know I could get this up and going," she said. "We need people to come into our community that are interested in investing in making it bigger and better than it already is."

Battle hopes the center can provide some economic momentum to an area he believes is ripe for revitalization. Given the location and it's purpose the word "dream" continuously comes to Battle's mind

"We're going to plan on living their dream out," he said, pointing to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard sign. "It's this idea of community ownership. Communities that are very close-knit, they support their own. It's just got to come out of the community."

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