Codefi co-founder plays a role in big downtown project

Behind the scenes, James Stapleton has been chipping away at a long-term vision for the technology sector in Cape Girardeau.

"The vision of Codefi was always larger than any single co-working space, but was really to become a part of a growing technology community," said James Stapleton, co-founder of Codefi. "Frankly, we've been working on it from the moment we started thinking about Codefi a couple years ago."

With the announcement of the Marquette Tech District, Stapleton's vision for Cape Girardeau has taken a big step forward to attracting a new generation of workers into the city.

Anchored by an expansion of Codefi, the Marquette Tech District will serve as a way to encourage technology-based companies and technology-minded people to come to Southeast Missouri and stay in the area.

Stapleton said the strategy of the Marquette Tech District is based around three components.

The space

The Marquette Tower, formerly the Marquette Hotel, is set to be redeveloped into a hub for tech-minded entrepreneurs and businesses.

Codefi's new offices will span three floors of the Marquette Tower in the renovation, Stapleton said.

The 19,000 square-foot office will offer Codefi members co-working space, private offices and conference rooms. This place will be used in conjunction with Codefi's current 7,000 square-foot office space in the Broadway Federal Building, which Stapleton plans to continue using after the move.

The new space will feature glass walls, open ceilings, and spiral staircases connecting the levels of the office.

The technology

Through a partnership with Big River Communications, the Marquette Tech District will offer free Wi-Fi internet access to much of downtown Cape Girardeau.

But perhaps more importantly, plans call for the installation of Gigabit internet service for businesses within the Marquette Tower. The fiber-optic service available to Tower occupiers is considerably faster than traditional internet service.

"It's not only fast, but on the private network where we've engineered it, it's engineered so it remains very fast as the data gets all the way to the backbone of the Internet," Stapleton said.

And the services are provided "at very low cost when compared to the traditional commercial cost," he said.

Focus on talent

Codefi has put into place a set of initiatives to train more programmers and create opportunities for local companies to hire those people and keep them in the region.

At Tuesday's news conference announcing the downtown renovation, Stapleton spoke of CodeCape, an initiative to help create and train talented coders in Southeast Missouri from a young age.

Initiatives offering educational and mentoring opportunities, as well as the 1st50K competition also will attract more companies from outside the area "because they know we have the programs where we're able to provide them these trained programmers," Stapleton said.

The Marquette Tech District will "lay claim to the fact that we're in this business," Stapleton said at the news conference, "and that people who are looking for a place to locate and find these kinds of incentives and talents can now look to downtown Cape Girardeau."

bbrown@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3630