Carlow’s working towards developing a €5million enterprise campus.
The planning process for a multi-building development is underway after councillors were recently presented with project plans by Kieran Comerford, Head of Economic Development and Enterprise with Carlow County Council.
He’s told KCLR News “Enterprise House was built 13 years ago and it’s for start-up companies so Carlow County Council CPO’d the two sites behind it, so it’s on the two sites behind that, the project is valued at approximately around €5million and it’s a scale-up campus on the O’Brien Road so it’s very much in the centre of the heart of the industrial area and the business area of County Carlow”.
Mr Comerford also says “Basically it’s all about international and innovation so it’s about supporting scale-ups so when companies grow in Carlow and we’re great in the context of indigenous companies so it’s really just to support that journey so when they grow they need assistance so they need a community around them and the idea of a campus is to bring all these people together and we’ve proven that over 13 years at Enterprise House with start-ups”.
He adds “And secondly it’s really about bringing the whole innovation partnership so the whole thing about bringing our international partners, our national partners the likes of IT Carlow and other partners on board in one campus to provide a service, so everything from training to remote working solutions to a wide base which will be perfect for the size for the region and also from the enterprise solutions for companies who are scaling”.
Hopes are that the centre would bring with it an economic and employment boost with Mr Comerford noting “Enterprise House currently has 122 staff so this property that we’re talking about developing is twice the size of that so hopefully when it’s actually full it would have significant jobs in the area but the first challenge is obviously to get planning permission in place and then obviously it needs Government backing but we’re confident that we’re in the right place at the right time for County Carlow”.
