Eligibility Requirements

1. Business must be in operation for less than 8 years.

2. Business must be In a designated target industry for the Greater Reading KIZ program.

3. Business must be located within a Keystone Innovation Zone designated region – see Geography below

Greater Reading KIZ Target Industries

1.       The Advanced Materials and Diversified Manufacturing industry cluster includes nearly all durable goods manufacturing industries. Notable exclusions from this cluster include food production, lumber, paper, and pharmaceuticals.

2.       Professional and Shared Services (PSS) or “back-office services” is broadly defined as services performed to support business operations that range from transaction-processing and disaster recovery to IT continuity planning and redundancy processing. PSS is typically a remote operation that is separated from a company’s headquarters of “front office” location.

3.       Food Processing is the set of methods and techniques used to produce and transform raw ingredients into food for consumption. It includes refining, packaging, and delivery of final product to the consumer.

Geography  

The Greater Reading KIZ will target two main geographic areas, Greater Reading and Kutztown - which includes five geographic nodes of activity. The five nodes include:

• Penn Street-Penn Avenue Corridor, including

  • Schmidt Training and Technology Center at RACC

  • GoggleWorks Center for the Arts

  • RiverPlace and Riverfront

• Spring Ridge Office Park, Directlink Technologies and Reading Regional Airport Park/PSU Berks including

  • Reading/Berks Research and Technology Center

• StonePointe Center/Albright

• Borough of Kutztown and EckHaus/KU

• TEK Park/KU