New Business Center Hopes to Generate a Lot of Green

Like a tender green shoot, an environmental-technology center sprouted Thursday at Cal State University Channel Islands, amid hopes that enterprising students and businesses will help it grow up and produce better air quality and more jobs.

The Clean Transportation Technology Business Center opened with a parking lot full of alternative-fuel trucks and cars, bicycles and its share of birth metaphors.

Dubbed an incubator, a hatchery and a nursery, it is designed to nurture start-up businesses through their early years with an infusion of corporate and government support and the collective brain power of the university to build successful companies that help clean a polluted world.

The third center of its kind in California, it is sponsored by Calstart-WestStart, a nonprofit consortium of 225 businesses and government agencies. So far, the group has spun off 3,600 private-sector jobs in the state in the last three years, said Calstart President Michael Gage. Other centers recently opened in Idaho, New Mexico and Colorado.

Among the kinds of firms Calstart assists are businesses developing clean-running vehicles, energy-efficient devices and pollution-control technology. Fledgling companies save money by leasing low-rent office space and sharing labs and manufacturing equipment.

“The goal is to clean up the air and not hurt the economy,� said Joseph E. Calhoun of the California Air Resources Board. “I think this will serve the people of this area well.�

The Camarillo campus was selected for the center because of the growth of technology-based companies in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and the San Fernando Valley. For example, firms that help design cars for Volvo, General Motors and BMW are within 10 miles of the campus, Gage said.

Calstart officials also are seeking partnerships with the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District and local transit agencies that have demonstrated creative approaches in the pursuit of clean transportation systems, from compressed natural gas buses to electric pickup trucks.

Cal State Channel Islands President Handel Evans praised the center, calling it a perfect fit for a university that aims to become a “green� campus heavily reliant on low-polluting technologies.

Evans said he will require that delivery trucks serving the university be powered by clean fuels; price student parking permits high to encourage students and faculty to take buses to school; and provide electric bicycles and scooters that students can check out like library books for use around campus. The first 1,500 students arrive in August.

“It goes to the root of what we are trying to do,� Evans said of the technology center. “We want to protect the environment here as much as we possibly can and set an example for the students.�