Montgomery County Business Incubator to be Renamed for Deceased William Hanna Jr.

Montgomery County’s first business incubator, the Shady Grove Innovation Center, will be linked to the man whose vision helped foster it -- William E. Hanna Jr. -- in a ceremony Sunday.

The longtime Rockville mayor and Montgomery County council member , just short of his 90^th birthday.

City and county officials, family and friends, including County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), County Council President Roger Berliner (D-Dist. 1) of Potomac, former Rockville mayor and friend Steven VanGrack and Merle Steiner, Hanna’s former chief of staff, are expected to attend the 2 p.m. ceremony at the center at 9700 Great Seneca Highway in Rockville.

In , Leggett, who served with Hanna on the County Council for 12 years, remembered Hanna as “a good friend” whose “character and integrity were beyond reproach.”

Hanna was elected to the Rockville City Council in 1968 and served as mayor from 1974 to 1982.

During four terms on the County Council, from 1982 to 1998, Hanna, a Democrat, fought to reserve farmland on the west side of Interstate 270 for science and biotechnology companies.

In the early 1980s, Hanna worked with then-County Executive Charles W. Gilchrist to create the , a research and industrial park devoted to biomedical and health care research. The center provides office and laboratory space for start-up and emerging information technology and biotechnology companies, according to a county news release.

“Bill pioneered the county’s investment in life sciences which directly led to our preeminent position as one of the world’s leading biotech centers,” Leggett said in .