Downtown Orlando’s entrepreneur center has a new name to go with its new home at Orlando Fashion Square mall.
The Orlando-based National Entrepreneur Center — formerly the Disney Entrepreneur Center — plans to begin moving into nearly 22,000-square-foot space at the mall on East Colonial Drive April 21 in time for an April 25 opening.
While the Disney name helped the center establish itself and gave it credibility, Jerry Ross, executive director of the center, said its scope and abilities have grown to a national and even global level. A Croatian film crew visited the center to film a documentary to help small businesses in that central European country, Ross said.
“We’ve been contacted by other states, cities and even countries who wanted to see how we do what we do, which pulled us back to our original vision as a national entrepreneur center,” Ross told Orlando Business Journal. “As we were printing everything related to the move, we decided to change our name.”
The Walt Disney World Resort continues to fund the center and raised its contribution to $150,000, $50,000 more than the company gave the center last year, Ross said. Disney, Orange County and the University of Central Florida also extended their sponsorship commitments through 2016.
The center provides one-on-one business coaching, seminars, networking events, access to software and business resources and other resources for small businesses. The center houses the Hispanic Business Initiative Fund, SCORE-Counselors to America’s Small Business, the Small Business Development Center at UCF, the UCF Business Incubation Program and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The African American Chamber of Commerce, the British American Chamber of Commerce of Central Florida, the Central Florida Disability Chamber, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metro Orlando, the National Association of Women Business Owners-Orlando and the Central Florida Chapter of the National Black MBA Association are also based at the center.
Since its founding in 2003, the center and its six service providers have been involved in $125 million worth of loans, coached 70,000 businesses and assisted in more than 700 new business launches.
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