MIDDLETOWN – A portion of the third floor of the former Horton Campus of Orange Regional Medical Center has been transformed into the Middletown Accelerator, a component of the Orange County Industrial Development Agency.
The facility, which initially has 13 businesses in the medical field, will be honing their skills and products, conducting research and networking.
What makes the project that much more special is that it is on the campus of the Touro College for Osteopathic Medicine providing the businesses with the ability to interact with future doctors.
Dr. Jerry Cammarada, chief operating officer and dean of student affairs at Touro, dubbed the overall facilities the Horton Science and Research Complex.
“Our college, our medical school, actually feels like an incubator in terms of what we are doing with our students, what we are developing, what we are creating,” Cammarada said. “The thing will be to see how we can integrate what we are doing in our medical school with what you are doing here in the incubator, not only in this incubator, but in all of the incubators that may be developing in and around the Mid-Hudson Valley.”
Middletown Mayor Joseph DeStefano hopes that in the future, those businesses
will stay within the community.
“Our goal is, to be a little bit selfish, is to have them grow here to the point where they have to relocate in our city, or at least, in and around our city,” DeStefano said. “I am sure there will benefits to other parts of the county, but with this incubator here, our goal is to have some goal in and around the Middletown area.”
Orange County IDA Chief Operating Officer Laurie Villasuso told a ribbon-cutting
ceremony the businesses will be able to increase their offerings and help
each other grow.
Their costs of doing business at the Accelerator will be minimal, for now. Campus owner Tony Danza is giving all 13 free rent for 18 months.
