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The Manoa Innovation Center - home to many small, high-tech startups - must find a new location by the time its lease with the University of Hawaii expires in April 2015. UH wants the space for its own programs, but bills have been introduced in the state Legislature to keep the center in its existing space.
A state agency, the High Technology Development Corp., depends.on rent paid by tenants at the facility to fund its business incubator programs and services at the center and statewide. HTDC built and operates the two-story, 40,000-square-foot building on land mauka the UH-Manoa campus secured through a 25-year land lease with UH.
"The agency does not get sufficient state funding to do our mission. Most of our operating expenditures come from our rent revenues," says HTDC CEO Yuka Nagashima. Without that money, programs will have to be terminated, she says.
UH officials have told legislators that the university wants...