Hand in hand with the “shops within a shop” theme is another entrepreneur-boosting experiment happening in Elizabeth City called The Incubator Project.

 

The Incubator Project is a subdivision of the River City Community Development Corporation (RCCDC) and focuses on assisting small, minority-owned businesses. Creator Lenora Jarvis-Mackey, President & CEO of RCCDC, stated, “The project started out as a strategy to help revitalize the heart of the black business district,” with talks of the project beginning in the early 1990s. At that time, there was a concern that as waterfront development continued to grow, the historic black business district area would be used as parking lots and business owners would lose their spaces.

 

Since RCCDC was a volunteer group without expertise in the governing laws of community development, Jarvis-Mackey will confess, “It has been a learning process getting The Incubator Project going.”​