ORANGE PARK – The Small Business Development Center has been funded for the next three years in Clay County.
The Board of Clay County Commissioners unanimously passed the move last week to allocate $150,000 to continue the agreement until Dec. 31, 2024. American Rescue Plan Act funds, set aside for disaster relief purposes, have been approved.
At no cost, the center can consult businesses before they invest, in their startup phase, or as they grow with a plethora of workshops and events.

County Volunteer Coordinator Victoria Hapner said the Clay County Chamber of Commerce used to house the SBDC, which later moved to office space on Park Avenue in Orange Park. The plan is to move the center to College Drive.
“We’ll be housing it at Community Services and hoping that we’ll be able to have a large impact,” Hapner said. Commissioner Jim Renninger asked about optimizing their services. Commissioner Betsy Condon said local businesses needed resources to improve their likelihood of success.

“They were instrumental in helping us in everything,” Condon said of her experience with the SBDC. “We needed a website design and they put us in contact with a small business that went through the same thing.”The SBDC is based out of the University of North Florida with consultants in more than a dozen local counties. Marice Hague, Associate Director of Special Programs & Marketing, said the SBDC gradually increased its profile in Clay County. She said the office was staffed part-time for almost two decades. Hague said the chamber collected money from sponsors to pay for the SBDC, but that funding was lost.

“For six years, we’ve been trying to have that support and funding, and of course, the chamber was able to offer that for a limited time,” Hague said. “So now with most of our other counties, we do have funding from public sources.”County Commissioner Mike Cella referred to the SBDC’s focus on entrepreneurs as “economic gardening.” Cella said he wished he would have had a service like the SBDC when he went into business.“This is really key to our economic development,” Cella added. “It’s a valuable free service.”