BOUNTIFUL -- Steve Cloward has been in business all of his life, he told members of the Bountiful Rotary Club last Thursday. The new director of the Davis Business Alliance, also known as the entrepreneurial center at the Davis Applied Technology College (DATC), said "When I graduated from college I had one desire, and that was to go to work for retail." While he admitted that was an odd desire, he managed to make it work, spending 22 years building up Big O Tires "practically from scratch." "During that process I had a ton of questions," he said. "I wished I had a resource company at my beck and call to answer some of my questions." When Cloward quit Big O, he started his own business doing car washes. "Then instead of the franchiser I became the franshisee, and again there were a lot of questions."

The Davis Business Alliance is designed to answer those questions. Cloward has worked to bring together agencies and businesses to help new entrepreneurs and provide support services.

"Basically I was given the plans of a 16,000-square-foot building and told, 'We want an incubator. We don't know how to run one or what we need,'" said Cloward.

While Cloward didn't know much about business incubators, he did know what questions he had in his career, and the questions other business owners had.

The recently-opened Business Alliance is divided into four different specialties.

The first is a business resource center with offices of organizations like the Service Corp of Retired Executives and Utah Bid Development solutions that have the resources to help entrepreneurs and existing businesses.

The center also features a research library with computer stations and access to databases usually found only in larger libraries.

Likely the most exciting area is the entrepreneurial station managed by Grow Utah Ventures with space for six to seven beginning companies.

The entrepreneurial station already has one budding company as an occupant, FundingUniverse.com, an Internet company designed to bring entrepreneurs together with angel investors.

Finally, the center has training rooms where business seminars and continuing education classes have been scheduled.

While much of the training and activity at the Business Alliance goes on in the evenings, Cloward said that the building and the resources in it can be impressive for visitors. "There was a tremendous response at the ribbon cutting," he said.

rwald@davisclipper.com