Chesapeake Innovation Center Moving to Odenton, Fort Meade Area

The growing technology sector around Fort George G. Meade has prompted the Chesapeake Innovation Center to move to new quarters in Odenton.

The center will leave its Annapolis home of the past 10 years for a new location in the Seven Oaks Office Building at 2288 Blue Water Blvd. in Odenton by the end September. More than 8,000 square feet will house incubator offices for up to 12 companies, Laura Willoughby, executive director of the CIC, told the Baltimore Business Journal.

“With this expanded, modern space, the innovation center will be able to grow our program and communities, ultimately enabling us to better meet the needs of entrepreneurs and technologists in the region,” Willoughby said on the CIC website. “This expansion positions the CIC and its member companies to access a wider network of corporate, government and academia partners in the entire region, while providing a centralized location to serve as the hub of innovation in Anne Arundel County.”

Tech entrepreneurs clustered in Annapolis when the business incubator opened in 2003 have spread out to the surrounding region.

“Business in Annapolis is great,” Willoughy said. “But a lot of the growth really is in the west part of the county.”

The incubator’s new site across the gates from Fort George G. Meade puts it in the heart of data, Willoughby told the Business Journal, making it easier for companies to work with the national security sector.

According to the center's website, CIC originally was focused on homeland security and homeland defense. Since then, CIC’s technology focus has evolved.

CIC has supported companies doing shipyard modeling, digital content storage, translation services, graphic authentication, biometric timekeeping, cloud management and more. In the national security space, companies have focused on bio-defense, security services, high-grade computer network defense, surveillance devices, IT consulting, data mining, digital forensics and much more.