ERMA – What is duneTech? Where is it? What will happen there?
Like the young technology firms that Cape May County hopes to attract, focused on drone, or unmanned aerial systems development, the business incubator was “hatched” at the Sept. 26 freeholder meeting.
By a resolution offered by Freeholder Will Morey, director of Economic Development, seconded by Freeholder Jeffrey Pierson, and by unanimous vote of the board, duneTech became real.
According to Morey, duneTech is a name that combines sand dunes and technology, will be housed at Building 8 at the Cape May County Airport at 250 Ranger Road. The space has been leased from the Delaware River and Bay Authority.
Those who will experiment and work at duneTech should be able to do so by Oct. 15, said Morey. He noted the “furniture is ready to fall off the truck” when asked how soon the doors might open.
Businesses that pay membership fees for three, six or 12 months will be able to use the facilities to tinker and tweak their drone designs, and test them in the airspace for which the county has a certificate of authority, said Morey.
He added that the incubator was “the next logical step” after the six-times-per-year forums that drew technologists from within the region.
They would gather, network, share ideas, and then formulate plans to make their ideas take wing.
“It’s office space. It’s conference space. It’s what we call tinker’s space, essentially workbenches in a workshop area where they can modify their products,” said Morey.
Those interested in developing UAS products include multi-rotor-type and fixed-wing, long-endurance drones, Morey said.
Luftronix, a firm that was among the first to join the county’s drone wave, is using a hangar where aircraft can be inspected by using a drone, up and around in a fraction of the time it would take manual inspections.
Similarly, Morey said, one of the firms that have expressed interest in duneTech is hoping to refine its products to use in bridge inspections in a cost-effective manner.
He said the county has offered to share bridge inspection reports on its inventory of bridges to assist the firm.
The aim, Morey said, is as it has always been since he assumed the directorship, to increase the number of jobs in the county that are year-round and that will pay employees well.
It is also Morey’s and the county’s hope that those who tinker in Unit 8, should they be from outside the area, will like where they are, and decide to locate their firms and their employees here.
“We are hopeful it will be a stepping stone for folks to establish a base of operations here in Cape May County. They’ve got to start somewhere. They might not be ready for that first step, taking space by them, and ramping up operations. This gives them an opportunity to get down here with an esprit de corps of other developers and operators to work in this tech environment.
Morey noted that many of the firms that duneTech may host have possibly two or three working on designs. He noted that, if they are successful, that nucleus may quickly expand to 20 or more employees housed and based locally.
Don’t imagine all those tech designers and engineers are fresh-faced twenty-somethings. Morey said there is a wide range of people ranging from their 20s into their 60s.
Some of the older ones, he added, were interested in agricultural applications, especially dispensing chemicals, pesticides and herbicides, but with drone technology, only in very specific areas, therefore “drastically reducing the amount of product” needed, Morey said.
As those new firms test and fail, refine and succeed, the county will be with them.
“We will be learning a lot on the way,” Morey said.
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