Nonprofit 36 Degrees North Looks To Expand Into Tulsa City Hall

The nonprofit 36 Degrees North is looking to expand its space to a floor in Tulsa's city hall, as well as expand its focus it to help companies grow. 

36 Degrees North has been helping young entrepreneurs start businesses in the city for more than four years. Now, it is looking to expand its space and services to help large companies, too. 

CEO Devon Laney said 36 Degrees North has helped bring 1,000 jobs to Tulsa, along with hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of economic impact.

"The next phase of that growth is really developing an incubation program geared towards what we would call high-growth, or scalable businesses,” Lacey said. “Those entrepreneurs are looking to have flexible scalable space and program support as they are building and growing those businesses.”

Tuesday afternoon, Tulsa city counselors took a tour of 36 Degrees North in Downtown. The nonprofit is asking the city for nearly a million dollars in CARES Act funds to expand to the 5th floor of City hall and build a space for what Laney calls "an incubation program." 

Laney said an incubation program is more hands-on than the typical workgroup environment 36 Degree North is known for.

"You have to hold entrepreneurs accountable,” Laney said. “So will meet with them on a regular basis to check on things; growth potential, growth milestones, job employee milestones, what are they doing to make sure they’re driving towards the goals and growing towards those goals, which we don’t do in a coworker in space.” 

Laney said right now the focus is on helping individual entrepreneurs. With added space, he said they would expand their services to help starting companies with job growth and resources.

"We are certainly doing this for the benefit of the community," Laney said. "We see this as an economic development driver and as a great opportunity to partner with the city potentially. In developing this new incubator program, we will drive job growth and hopefully help us diversify the industrial base of Tulsa.” 

As of now, the Tulsa city council has not decided, but it plans to discuss the expansion at Wednesday’s working committee meeting.