Come this time next year, Davis County entrepreneurs will have a big new tool to help them get off the ground.

The Davis Applied Technology College broke ground earlier this month on the Roy W. and Elizabeth E. Simmons Entrepreneurial Center, a $2 million facility the college hopes will fuel economic development for the county and lend a hand to budding entrepreneurs.

"We've been dreaming about this for years," said Brent Petersen, vice president of operations at DATC. "This will be an economic development engine for the whole county."

The center will fill many purposes, Petersen said. It will be an incubator of sorts for young businesses that need space to develop ideas and resources. It will offer information and resources for growing businesses. And it will be a valuable training/proving ground for DATC students.

"The main focus is on helping entrepreneurs just beginning to get their business off the ground," he said. "Once they do that, they can move on to an industrial park or other facility. So if someone's in their basement or garage with a great idea for a business, they can come here, and we'll help them with training on how to do their accounting, maybe, or how to do sales.

"It's also open to established companies, which can come in for the different trainings we'll offer. And students as well. We'd love to find and develop companies that will be available to hire our students. For the last 10 years, we've dreamed of developing something that would help create businesses that stay here in the county."

Which isn't easy in the bedroom communities that dot Davis County.

Tammy Kikuchi, spokeswoman for Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the center, said that "almost 50 percent of Davis County residents leave the county each day to go to work."

"This center will provide the support for start-up businesses to grow, and hopefully provide jobs locally, so people can work closer to where they live," Kikuchi said.

At 16,000 square feet, the facility will include a reception area, offices and a large conference room. There also will be space for business devel- opment.

"Depending on the entrepreneur that comes in, that space may be set up into cubicles — if they're an IT (information technology) company, for example — or into larger spaces if they're doing something like light manufacturing," Petersen said. "It's a very flexible space that can be divided up many ways."

The center is in the process of formalizing relationships with the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Service Corps of Retired Executives and other organizations that may provide financial and other assistance.

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E-mail: jnii@desnews.com