The Valencian tech and innovation entrepreneurship ecosystem is in luck, at last Valencian startups have been given a free hand to settle into the old maritime station of La Marina de Valencia. Four years after the trial began, the concession of the old maritime station went through following the withdrawal of Belgian company Fosbury & Sons’ appeal to the High Court of Justice of the Valencian Community against the ruling of the Administrative Court of Valencia that annulled its concession.
Once it meets the corresponding requirements, the Valencia Innovation District project, led by Startup Valencia, will allow the Marina to take shape and become an internationally recognised tech hub housing startups and innovative companies. With the development of this project, entrepreneurs, investors and companies will have a space from which to connect and develop joint open innovation projects. The aim is to create an environment that encourages collaboration as well as the development and exchange of ideas.
The former maritime station of Valencia is located next to the Edificio del Reloj (Clock Building), in the centre of the innovation district of La Marina de Valencia, and the concession of its 4,750 square metres will be for a period of 25 years. Valencia Innovation District’s investment to put the space into operation will exceed 3 million euros. After its opening, the tech hub will generate more than 500 highly qualified jobs. It is estimated that more than 5,000 tech and innovation professionals will participate annually in the training and networking events and activities as well as in the open innovation programmes that corporations and institutions will develop at the tech hub.
“The achievement of this project will bolster the work and trajectory of the more than 1,000 startups registered in the Valencian region, according to data from our Observatory,” says Juan Luis Hortelano, president of Startup Valencia. “The fact of having a physical meeting point where startups can interact with each other, corporations, and investors, and that they can do so in a genuinely innovative and entrepreneurial area of the city, is the boost we needed to position Valencia as one of the leading international tech hubs,” he says.
Next administrative steps
The project led by Startup Valencia now has the opportunity to take shape following the conclusion of the concession process that had been in dispute for four years. Recently, the Administrative Chamber of the High Court of Justice of the Valencian Community accepted the dismissal of Fosbury & Sons’ appeal against the ruling of 6 May 2021, which annulled the concession for non-compliance with the tender specifications. In the next few days it will be four years since the Official State Gazette announced the tender for the old station on the 11th of April 2018.
Taking into account that Valencia Innovation District is the only bid that, according to the court, “presented an economic offer in line with the specifications”, the Consortium of La Marina de Valencia will have to convene a bid committee meeting in order to continue with the process. It is also the case that the Valencian bid obtained a higher score than the Belgian bid in the binding technical report drawn up by the Committee of Experts, an organ assisting the bid committee. With this data, as stated in the tender documents, the committee will submit the corresponding concession proposal to the Delegate Commission of the Consortium’s Governing Council, which will be responsible for issuing the decision so long awaited by Valencian entrepreneurs. From that moment on, the period for submitting additional documentation and formalising the concession will begin.
A project at its optimum point of maturity
The Valencia Innovation District project is led by Startup Valencia, a private non-profit organisation that, since 2017, has represented startups in the Valencian Community and is a benchmark for the ecosystem of tech and innovation companies.
The entity continues to consolidate itself as one of the most important clusters in the country: it already has 300 members from the digital and tech sector based in the Valencian Community, as well as the collaboration of Jeff, GoHub (Global Omnium), BStartup (Banco Sabadell) and Google for Startups as Global Partners; Dekalabs, Wayra (Telefónica), Elewit (Red Eléctrica), Zeus Smart Vision Data, Decathlon Open Innovation, Plug and Play, BigTranslation (BigBuy) and Opentop Valenciaport Innovation Hub (Port of Valencia) as Corporate Partners; and Transparent Edge Services, Sales Layer, DWF-RCD, SpeedOut, Damm, Aktion Legal, Fresh People, Voicemod, Sesame, Glovo, Zubi Labs, GeeksHubs and Itera as Partners.
In addition, with the aim of positioning Valencia as an internationally recognised tech hub, Startup Valencia holds Valencia Digital Summit every year. The fifth edition of the event will take place from the 24th to the 26th of October at the City of Arts and Sciences, where more than 10,000 people are expected to attend.
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