Black Wall Street Business Center Launches to Give Minority Businesses a Boost

Minority businesses in Tulsa, Oklahoma have been given a leg up with the grand opening of the Black Wall Street Business Center.

The Tulsa World reports that the 2,200-square-foot facility will work to advance Black, indigenous, and minority businesses and entrepreneurship. The center is also the finishing touch of Sherry Gamble Smith, the Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce President who was killed earlier this summer.

“The original vision was not just co-working, but incubation as well, being able to give businesses the resources they need to create sustainability and growth, depending on where they are in their process,” Lindsey Corbitt the executive director of the Black Wall Street Business Center told The Tulsa World.

“We are expanding off an idea that she had, that had begun to connect on and operate, which is Nest Collective, an accelerator program for entrepreneurs.

“From that concept, we noticed that some of those businesses needed more resources and loved just being in that environment with other entrepreneurs, which expanded the idea into a co-working space and shared offices so people can continue to utilize those resources that we provide.”

The business center pays homage to the Tulsa Greenwood neighborhood, which featured dozens of prominent Black businesses and flourished as a Black economic and cultural hub known as Black Wall Street until the Tulsa Race Massacre on May 31, 1921.

The Black Wall Street Business Center is located in Suite 800 at 1800 S. Baltimore Avenue and features three shared office spaces, 16 working desks, a seating area and a meeting room, free Wi-Fi and printing, and a kitchen with coffee, snacks, tea and water.

Shared offices can be rented for $400 a month and desks at $250 a month. The Center will be open five days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.