A Downtown businessman has a smart idea for nurturing young entrepreneurs, a responsibility city and state leaders have ignored. BoDo developer Mark Rivers will open in June the Boise WaterCooler, a business development center dedicated to innovators.

Not just any new business gets to move into the former Boise Heating & Cooling building at 14th and Idaho streets. Rivers is catering only to people creating new technology or patents. He's looking for unique ideas in software, media, filmmaking, green technology and marketing.

The WaterCooler is an incubator for innovation. The next generation of entrepreneurs - people with great minds but no money - can move their inventions out of the garage and into a strategic gathering place.

The planned tenants include:

- Ming Solar, a green technologies/lighting company with patents.

- CropLogic USA, a company from New Zealand that created a software program called the Potato Calculator, which helps potato farmers monitor growing conditions and better manage the use of water, fertilizer and pesticides.

- OKOS Solutions, an Idaho Falls-based tech company, with patents originating from the Idaho National Laboratory.

- WHO Marketing Services, a branding agency.

- Jesse Cordtz Animation, a media production company for television, motion pictures and advertising.

- Kickstand, an entrepreneur networking organization.

One key advantage to the arrangement: These businesses will have each other just down the hall for networking and collaboration. The WaterCooler is structured to help businesses grow and learn.

Also in the building will be Idaho TechConnect, which helps companies secure grants and investor financing, and Boise State University's Centre for Creativity, which studies how creativity impacts economic development.

The rent is relatively low, about $700 a month per business. Rivers donated $200,000 of his own money into the venture and formed a board of directors responsible for managing a fundraising campaign. The organization has applied for nonprofit status.

This building, an empty eyesore for 10 years, may jumpstart new development and breathe life back into this vacant part of Downtown.

BSU's Technical and Entrepreneurial Center, which opened in 2003 in Nampa to help early-stage companies perfect business plans and find capital, validates the demand for a place like the WaterCooler. The BSU center is basically at capacity, working with more than 30 companies and fielding calls from other startups every week.

Economic development efforts should focus on small companies. Creating a hub for new businesses is one way to grow the next generation of Idaho employers, a smart investment for our future.

We hope the WaterCooler is just a beginning.

The city and state - both have been without economic development directors for months (the state appointed a new director Thursday) - should get in the game as well.

"Our View" is the editorial position of the Idaho Statesman. It is an unsigned opinion expressing the consensus of the Statesman's editorial board. To comment,e-mail editorial@idahostatesman.com.