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There was great fanfare at City Hall when Mayor Dinkins finally unveiled his nine-point aid plan for small business. Long-awaited and overdue, it won plaudits for growth initiatives, like the pledge to create five small business incubators, one in each borough.
That was in October 1990. Nearly two years later, the mayor's promise has not yet been fulfilled. Not one new incubator has come on line. The only one ready to open was inaugurated by the previous administration.
Most troubling of all, the sites haven't even been selected yet in Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. Business is still waiting.
"Compared with the rest of the nation, New York has not shown much interest in incubators," says Dinah Adkins, executive director of the Athens, Ohio-based National Business Incubation Association, which represents 462 incubators nationwide.
Indeed, that problem was dramatically underscored earlier this month when the New York/New Jersey Minority Purchasing Council moved to scrap its ailing Brooklyn incubator, which lacked a permanent funding source and had dragged the council to the very brink of fiscal insolvency.
That left the city with virtually no true incubators, entrepreneurial greenhouses that nurture budding companies in city-owned buildings, providing below-market rent,...