American Public Media will launch a 10,000-square-foot shared workspace in downtown St. Paul called the Glen Nelson Center.
With the help of the Knight Foundation, the center will house a new business incubator.
The Glen Nelson Center is slated to open officially in the fall at the recently established Osborn370 building on Wabasha and 5th streets, which many know as the former Ecolab headquarters. Applications to be a part of the incubator will start to be made available next month and work with the startups is scheduled to begin this summer.
"The Glen Nelson Center is really about future-proofing public media and American Public Media and recognizing that we are in an era of significant change and disruption generally and in the media environment in particular," said Jeff Freeland Nelson, the general partner of the Glen Nelson Center and an entrepreneur himself.
The center was funded by more than $1 million in gifts made to Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media in honor of Glen Nelson, a surgeon and longtime board member at the firms who died in 2016. Nelson was also the husband of former Carlson Cos. Chief Executive Marilyn Carlson Nelson.
"We are immensely grateful for Marilyn Carlson Nelson and her family's support of this initiative and its dedication to Glen's mission," Jon McTaggart, chief executive of American Public Media Group, said in a statement. "This wouldn't be possible without the scores of friends who made memorial gifts in honor of Glen."
Newman's Own Foundation and the Bill Kling Innovation Endowment also contributed.
The first program at the Glen Nelson Center will be Lunar Startups, which plans to provide services to help other startups at the space. Lunar Startups was launched with a $1 million grant from the Knight Foundation, which has doled out millions for art projects in St. Paul for its annual Knight Arts Challenge.