EDITORIAL: Business launchpad a terrific vision
Feb. 25—Missouri Southern State University and downtown Joplin have a longstanding partnership; downtown is where Southern launched as Joplin Junior College in 1937, and downtown was its home for the next 30 years.
It's part of the reason we like the plan to convert the former Joplin Public Library on Main Street — now owned by Southern — into a business launchpad. It's a terrific vision for the building as well as for the downtown, and it will be great for the business community.
A partnership involving the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, MSSU, the city, the Downtown Joplin Alliance and perhaps others was laid out Monday during a meeting of the Joplin City Council.
The chamber describes the launchpad as "a collaborative space for aspiring and existing entrepreneurs and all our entrepreneurial ecosystem partners. The space will empower individuals with tools and resources to better support innovation, entrepreneurship, and startup businesses."
MSSU would base its Small Business Development Center, now in the Plaster Center on the campus, in the former library. It also would be home to the Center for Advanced Professional Studies, a dual-credit program for high school students that would provide internships while working with professionals in fields such as engineering, business, media, criminal justice and education — many of which are based downtown. The launchpad could serve as a site for a culinary startup program that would provide spaces to start a restaurant, said Toby Teeter, president of the chamber, and a place to teach digital technologies to displaced workers. He noted it also would increase access and diversity to attract minorities, women and low-income entrants to digital occupations and entrepreneurship.
Reinventing what is now a vacant building at 300 S. Main St. will only add to the energy and momentum building downtown.
Of course, it's only a vision. It would require perhaps a $10 million renovation of the building, but Southern was just a vision once, too, until educators, the business community and others saw an opportunity. Talks on funding the launchpad will continue between the chamber, the university and the city, Teeter told the council.
Success builds on a vision and a great plan, and this look like the ticket.
