Brown plans to host the center on the second floor of a building it owns in the Jewelry District at 1 Davol Square.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PROVIDENCE –– The state Economic Development Corporation and Brown University are opening a center to help entrepreneurs start businesses, an effort to slow the state’s spiking unemployment rate.

Late yesterday, the EDC board agreed to spend $100,000 to help build the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Two other public bodies –– The Slater Technology Fund and the Science and Technology Advisory Council –– are contributing an additional $50,000 apiece.

Participants would pay fees for services at the center that backers say will eventually be subsidized by corporate sponsors.

“We need more business starts in this state,” J. Michael Saul, the acting head of the EDC, said. “They’re singles and bunts, but we’re going to score runs that way.”

For years, Rhode Island has tried to persuade large corporations to relocate here, hoping to import employers to replace disappearing manufacturers.

Those efforts paid off in 2002, when drug maker Amgen Inc. moved into the state, creating hundreds of high-paying jobs. But there have been few sequels, and the national economic downturn has shackled Rhode Island with the country’s second-highest unemployment rate.

State officials are now looking for inspiration farther back in Rhode Island’s history, to an era when local start-ups, including textile mills, jewelry makers, CVS and American Power Conversion, grew into global behemoths.

The proposed center is designed to build businesses from scratch, shepherding entrepreneurs and hospital and academic researchers from university laboratories and garages into high-rise office suites.

Brown plans to host the center on the second floor of a building it owns in the Jewelry District at 1 Davol Square.

The project joins a handful of initiatives grand in design but backed by scarce resources.

Johnson & Wales University, for example, already operates a small-business development center. And the Science and Technology Advisory Council gives out $1.5 million annually for research projects with commercial potential.

The Slater Technology Fund, a taxpayer-backed source of venture capital, has $3 million to spread around annually to small life-sciences and information-technology firms. It also offers office space to start-up companies in Richmond Square.

In his State of the City speech this month, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline said he hopes to create another facility to provide research tools for small businesses.

Supporters of the proposed Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship say it will strengthen all of those efforts. The Science and Technology Advisory Council included the project in its recommendations for this year, and The Slater Fund hopes to find investment opportunities at the complex.

Thomas E. Deller, director of planning and development for Providence city government, said Cicilline’s proposed research facility would provide space for center alumni to try out their new skills.

EDC board members unanimously approved the project. But first, several questioned the plan, criticizing it as too focused on academic researchers and too disconnected from established businesses.

“I don’t normally equate entrepreneurs and universities,” said board member Keith W. Stokes, executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce. “I’d like to see the private sector more involved.”

Board member Alexander Biliouris, a real estate agent in Cumberland, agreed. “It seems to me it’s really focused more on institutional and academic use,” he said. “It’s really not focused on the general public. There shouldn’t be any deception about what we’re trying to do.”

For now at least, it appears that the state’s hospitals and universities will provide the first participants. The Rhode Island School of Design and Lifespan, owner of Rhode Island Hospital and Miriam Hospital, have written letters of support.

“No university or hospital apparently has the resources or is willing to take this on for themselves,” Jeffrey R. Seemann, dean of the College of Environment and Life Sciences at the University of Rhode Island, said. “Faculty are not very good about getting out into the real world.”

But Clyde L. Briant, Brown’s vice president for research, said the center’s staff will recruit entrepreneurs from across the state.

bgedan@projo.com