The word “incubator” should not be part of the Columbus business lingo going forward. At least, when Derrik Pannell, the polyglot responsible for the Center of Entrepreneurial Development speaks about the project, it’s clear he has grown his vision into something that serves the Black community and helps create a pathway to becoming an entrepreneur. In short, he provides resources that incubators often cannot.
The COED, a once decaying warehouse on East Main Street, is now a busy hive, even early on the August Sunday morning I visit. It has been completely gutted and refitted in Pannell’s vision: It’s an event hub where community panels and conversations take place, a co-working habitat with portals and shared desks, conference rooms that fill quickly, recording studios buzzing with voices and beats, and even a fitness room. Soon, a wing of behavioral health offices will open to support the surrounding community. The space is regularly referred to by its team as an ecosystem, and as I ride up and down in the elevator with Pannell, each stop reveals another layer of that ecosystem alive in practice.
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Pannell is generational to Columbus. After graduating from East High School, he became a serial entrepreneur. His first company was a landscaping business that grew quickly and profitably. He later took time to teach youth in the community, where he met his wife, a veteran of Columbus City Schools.
But he eventually landed back into the rhythm of creating new endeavors and becoming an expert in real estate acquisitions and development. As owner of the Blu Note Jazz Café near Bexley, he recently expanded that concept to a second location on East Town Street that will also feature a private club. A third Blu note in Franklinton is also in the works, as is a musical takover of the former Grill and Skillet diner on East Main Street. Pannell strives to take advantage of properties where others might see only a void.
“It was definitely, being an African American entrepreneur, that I understood the challenges that we face. I understood the education that was necessary to give,” says Pannell about his drive to start COED and empower those who need the extra help. “I can have the conversation with banks and explain to them why their lending policies are systemically racist. I can speak to some policies that need to change. We try to address the fragmentations of resources and the community. We want everything under one roof.”
His peers say the ecosystem COED provides is important. Especially in a time when community resources will become increasingly scarce.
“I first met Derrik while I was working for Spectrum,” says painter Evan Williams. “I knocked at his door all the time, and he always turned me down and refused to take the Spectrum service, but he did take my business card for my art business instead. He called me up and asked for a jazz series of paintings that I had done. Fast forward about two years later, a little after the pandemic, and he called me out of the blue and asked me to come see something he wanted me to be a part of.”
Now, Williams’ art business EWill Studio is a permanent tenant at COED, and his pop culture portraits fill nearly every empty space. His paintings are no longer just canvases sitting in a home studio, but work that brightens the flow of the building.
In late 2022, as COED was still getting off the ground, Christopher Jones joined with Pannell shortly after the building was secured. At the time, it was still in what Jones called “raw form.” He offered his already successful teen program, the Content Creators Camp, to take residence at the center. At COED, kids from the community, ages 14 to 18, participate in a summer workshop that teaches everything the center embraces—being creative in business while learning the tools needed to succeed. From networking, to content creation, to creating a brand, the camp puts entrepreneurship into the hands of its young participants. The League of Creative Disruptors—an evolving continuation of the camp—subsequently bloomed at COED and now has a panoply of creatives, as Jones describes, “tapped into the space.”
“For business there are many things I could point to,” says Jones, who now is a permanent fixture at COED, under the umbrella of DSRPTV Labs. “Perseverance is required, strategy is needed, quality work is mandatory, communication is key, mentors and a village should not be optional, and EBITDA [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization] should not be a foreign word. The branding, the marketing, the audits, helping companies and young entrepreneurs refresh their plan. Understanding your numbers is vital to keeping a business.”
Kim Knights, CEO of Columbus Empowerment Corp., also joined Pannell at COED early on. Her nonprofit has spent decades making small businesses a reality, but nothing felt as purposeful as this.
“We’re a lifetime entrepreneurial organization, so we don’t really focus on startups,” Knights says. “That said, every business that was on our recent restaurateur panel started as a business that we’ve touched in some form or fashion, which included Toro Meat Market, Creole Kitchen, Flavor 91 Bistro and JYN Bakery.”
Knights calls COED a safe space in a way that is not rhetoric.
“There’s never been a place like this with the resources we have, the structure that’s been established,” she says. “I’d like to say that it was organic, but it wasn’t. It was purposed. It shows us that as people of color, we can work together. We’ve been saying this for decades. We’re really blessed to be able to say that we are showing what we set out to do.”
“One of the biggest problems our community faces is that we can’t get along, we don’t get along, we don’t work together,” says Pannell. “It was important to put people who have the same mindset together in close proximity. But we have to change the way we think because we’ve been taught to distrust one another. What you’ll find here is that we remove that hindrance.”
Ownership, he insists, is the foundation.
“Get in that tax bracket. We can cry all day about the problems, but where is the solution,” says Pannell. “I preach and teach ownership. Everything here is designed to put people in a position to succeed, and that means equipping them with the knowledge, the facilities and the tools to create their own future.”
This story appeared in the November 2025 issue of Columbus Monthly. Subscribe here.
This article originally appeared on Columbus Monthly: Derrik Pannell Builds an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem on East Main Street
Reporting by Kevin J. Elliott / Columbus Monthly
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