Charging Station Company Opens L.A.’s Incubator

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Charging Station Company Opens L.A.’s Incubator
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It’s the only success story so far in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan for a clean technology corridor that he proclaimed would make the city the nation’s leader in alternative energy and alternative vehicle companies. Last week, a “clean tech incubator” opened in a small industrial building on the east side of downtown with its first tenant moving in: 350Green, a company that installs and operates electric-vehicle charging stations.

Ukrainian immigrant Mariana Gerzanych, chief executive of 350Green, started her company three years ago in Washington, D.C. Subscribers pay the company a monthly fee to use its charging stations for juicing up their electric vehicles.

Last year, Gerzanych and her business partner, 350Green President Tim Mason, moved the company to San Diego to be near one of the major charging station manufacturers.

But Gerzanych said she wanted to be in Los Angeles because she sees it as the biggest market for electric cars. She was looking for a way into the market when she ran into Fred Walti at a conference some months ago. Walti had just been tapped by Villaraigosa to head an effort to open a business incubator in the middle of the clean technology corridor.

The incubator was set up with money from the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. The incubator charges discounted rent of $300 for each employee a tenant company brings into the building. It also provides basic furniture, telecommunications hookups and access to business coaching staff.

“We see ourselves as the business equivalent of a baseball farm team for the clean tech sector,” Walti said.

Gerzanych said the clean tech incubator was exactly what she was looking for.

“We need to be close to green technology companies, to be able to work with them,” she said.

So far, 350Green has about six employees in the incubator building; besides incubator staff, they are the only employees in the building on Hewitt Street. Walti said he’s received inquiries from about a half-dozen companies and is in discussions with two of them to move into the building.

The incubator’s official opening is scheduled for October.

Walti said the building will be able to handle up to eight small companies with 30 total employees among them. But preliminary work has already begun on a permanent building a few blocks away that Walti said will be able to house 350 clean tech company workers when it opens in about two years.

But even if that building reaches full capacity, the incubator wouldn’t fulfill Villaraigosa’s vision of a nation-leading clean tech corridor.

“The incubator is a good thing; but it’s not a major transforming event for the corridor,” said Larry Kosmont, an L.A. economic development consultant. “Companies can start there and get ready to bring products to market, but eventually, they have to move on.”

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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