Montgomery opens newest incubator in Rockville

Downtown facility focuses on high-tech and foreign businesses

Moslander’s 10-employee Internet-based health and wellness company is moving from the county’s largest and oldest incubator, the 60,000-square-foot Maryland Technology Development Center.

Being near the Rockville Metro station, the new county library, which is next to the incubator, and other downtown businesses will be a big boost to the company, Moslander said. LiveHealthier hopes to add as many as 10 employees by the end of the year.

The Rockville Innovation Center features several boardrooms, kitchens, and fax and copy machines on its two floors. There is a spiral staircase, a receptionist and sweeping views of the new Rockville Town Plaza, including from an outdoor sixth-floor rooftop.

The lease rate in the downtown Rockville incubator is set at market, but the value of added facilities such as the conference rooms makes it a great deal for tenants, said Ruth Semple, business development specialist for the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development.

‘‘The incubator is not subsidized by the county,” she said. ‘‘But tenants get more amenities and services than they would someplace else.”

Ten companies have signed up, and there will likely be 30 to 40 in the 55 offices by the time the incubator is full, Semple said. ‘‘The exact number depends on how many offices each company leases,” she said.

The incubator is designed with shared space and facilities so employees of each company will meet with each other and share ideas, said Lynne Benzion, associate director of Rockville Economic Development Inc., the economic development arm for Rockville and one of the key drivers of the incubator. Seminars and other aid are available.

Since 1999, the Montgomery facilities, which also include the 20,000-square-foot Silver Spring Innovation Center and the 10,000-square-foot Wheaton Business Innovation Center, have seen more than 40 companies graduate. Those businesses have created more than over 1,700 jobs and occupied nearly 500,000 square feet of commercial office space in the county, officials said.

Among the largest to graduate is Gaithersburg Internet communications software company NexTone Communications. NexTone topped Deloitte & Touche’s annual list of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in Maryland for 2006. The company’s sales leaped by 7,901 percent from 2001 to 2005, when they hit $14.7 million, according to the list.

Two more incubators are planned in Montgomery County in the near future. The 30,000-square-foot Germantown Innovation Center on the Germantown campus of Montgomery College should open by the end of the year, Semple said. That will include lab space to support 15 to 25 technology and life sciences companies — something the downtown Rockville incubator, which focuses on high-tech and foreign companies, does not have.

Another incubator is planned for the East County Center for Science and Technology office park the county is developing on a 115-acre site along Route 29 near the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s new headquarters.

Tenants includeclean-energy business

Other companies moving into the downtown Rockville facility include Clean Currents LLC, a broker and aggregator of ‘‘green” forms of energy. President Gary Skulnik is stepping down as executive director of the Clean Energy Partnership, a Silver Spring organization of companies that works on solutions to global warming and air pollution.

‘‘I’ll still be involved with the partnership,” Skulnik said. Scott Nash, founder and president of My Organic Market, will be heading the group.

Clean Currents has recently helped companies such as Fitzgerald Auto Mall in North Bethesda to purchase energy from renewable sources such as wind power. The company is donating clean energy carbon offsets to this week’s SilverDocs documentary film festival in Silver Spring, making it the first ‘‘carbon neutral” film festival in North America, Skulnik said.