Tour the Innovation Center @3401: new incubator from Drexel, Science Center

The Innovation Center @3401, the new incubator from Drexel University and the University City Science Center, hopes to be the entrepreneurial hub of University City’s “Innovation District.”

“We want to be the petri dish of the broader Innovation District vision,” said Kara Lindstrom, who runs Drexel’s ExCITe Center research lab on the first floor of the 3401 Market building that houses the incubator.

The plans behind the Innovation District, a corridor of tech businesses, research initiatives and educational buildings to revitalize West Philadelphia, have risen to national prominence with stories in the New York Times and most recently, Politico.

The two-floor, 17,500-square-foot incubator opened its doors last month and has held a series of morning open houses to show off the space. RSVP for the last open house on July 17 by emailing Kristin Hart at khart@sciencecenter.org

The Innovation Center @3401 has lots of glass, following the design trend in local incubators. (Photo courtesy of the University City Science Center)

The space has all the makings of a coworking space, with private offices, an open collaborative space, whiteboard walls and a shared conference room. Memberships start at $300/month.

Early stage accelerator DreamIt Ventures has its own wing, where its fall class will have office space. Companies in DreamIt’s health accelerator, DreamIt Health, will also use the collaborative space, as will the health IT companies in the Science Center’s new Digital Health Accelerator. Mobile enterprise company Point.io, which moved from Wayne, Pa., also has its own wing. Pharma giant Merck also has an office in the space, though the two staffers we met there last week declined to elaborate on their presence, saying that they needed to clear it with their press team.

IC@3401 still has space for more companies, said Hart, who runs the center.

Companies in the Science Center’s Digital Health Accelerator will operate out of the Innovation Center @3401’s open space. (Photo courtesy of the University City Science Center)

Companies now at the incubator are a mix of earlier stage companies and more established life sciences companies with headquarters in the suburbs. They include:

• Health Next
• Blinky
• Enterprise Law Associates, which provides legal counsel to life sciences and tech businesses
• TravelCare, a medical information software provider that had office space in Langhorne, Pa., incubator Novotorium
• Sensory Technologies, a Canadian company that participated in the Science Center’s Canadian health IT incubator 
• Point.io
• Merck

Point.io has an office within the Innovation Center @3401.