incubator

Have you ever seen those cardboard stands full of CDs made by Putumayo World Music at the coffee shop or the bookstore or the grocery store? As it turns out, those CDs — millions of them — are distributed here in Batavia, out of a huge warehouse space on the second and third floors at the Harvester Center, the old Batavia business incubator.

We got an inside pass today to check them out. Here's what we found:

Joseph Mancuso was managing a hardware store when his family charged him with the impossible task of recruiting a tenant for a vacant hulk of a factory that measured nearly a million square feet. Once a foundry, bordered by freight rails and industry on all sides, the building was literally a community investment: the land had been bought in nickels and dimes by the residents of Batavia in the 1880s to attract big business to the area. They succeeded. But by 1956, the factory was finished.

Of course, Mancuso couldn't find anyone to take the space. It was the 1950s. His son, Tom Mancuso, told us a bit about the history that followed, and a funny little story about how the world came to know the business incubator. Enjoy!

In Batavia business lore, there are few who loom as large as Joseph Mancuso, an incurable entrepreneur who bequeathed ambition to his children as if it were a heritage.

Mancuso died Tuesday at the state Veterans Home in Batavia, the Daily News reported. He was 88.

Reporter Roger Muehlig writes: "A son of Italian immigrants, Mancuso grew up during the Great Depression and once picked beans on a farm for $1 per 100 pounds."

From those modest beginnings, Mancuso flourished. He was a star athlete in high school, class president, later became a master sergeant in the Army Signal Corps and, once he returned home from World War II, became the first president of the Batavia Area Chamber of Commerce, Muehlig reported. (And those just a few of his social successes).

But the big fish came a little later:

"In 1956, Massey-Ferguson, the largest industry in Batavia, N.Y., closed down, leaving vacant an 850,000 square foot complex of multi-story buildings and driving unemployment to more than 20 percent. The Mancuso family wanted to reverse the situation. They purchased the complex and charged Joe Mancuso, then a hardware store manager, with filling it, creating jobs and making money.

"He tried to find a single company to rent the behemoth plant riddled with maintenance needs but after a month resolved that was a "crazy" idea. Instead, he decided to divide the building and rent to separate businesses that he would nurture by providing shared office services, assistance with raising capital and business advice. Within a short time he had recruited his first tenants, including a winery, a charitable organization and a chicken company. "We were out on the road a lot of the time, trying to interest investors and attract companies to the center," he told the NBIA Review, "and in a joking way, because of all the chickens, we started calling it 'the incubator.'" The name stuck long after the chicken company left, and Mancuso would forever be known as the man who coined the term business incubator." (From the National Business Incubation Association Web site).

"Joe was a visionary, years ahead of his time," Steven Hyde, president of the Genesee County Economic Development Center, told the Daily News.

Friends may call at the Gilmartin Funeral Home and Cremation Company on Friday, May 2, from 4:00 to 8:00pm. A Memorial Mass will be held Saturday, May 3, at 9:30am in St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church, 122 Liberty St., Batavia, NY 14020. In lieu of flowers, memorials are suggested to the local Boy Scouts, the Batavia Kiwanis Club, the YMCA or the National Incubation Association. Go here for more details.

UDPATE: Buffalo News Obituary.