The Sandy Springs Innovation Center, a facility intended to brand the city as friendly to cutting-edge businesses, celebrated a ribbon-cutting attended by a large crowd on Oct. 12.
“You just don’t know what world-changing, life-changing ideas are going to come out of this space,” said Mayor Rusty Paul, one of many officials on hand to celebrate the grand opening of the center in the Northpark tower at 1000 Abernathy Road.
The Innovation Center is intended as a combination of start-up business incubator and shared workspace offering rentable desks and offices. It also has an outdoor patio, where guests played bean-bag horseshoes.
The center is a nonprofit spun out of the Sandy Springs Perimeter Chamber of Commerce with major funding from the Sandy Springs Development Authority and Comcast.
Among those cutting the ribbon was Gabriel Sterling, the Development Authority’s vice president, who also serves as a Sandy Springs City Council member is running for Fulton County chair. He likened the center to the Medicis, the powerful banking family of Renaissance Italy who patronized such artists as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
Andy Macke, Comcast’s vice president for government and community affairs, said the center embodies the “can-do spirit” and public-private partnership model of the city of Sandy Springs.
For more information about the Innovation Center, see sandyspringstechcenter.com.