East Lansing isn't just a Cool City — now it's a smart one, too.

In a joint meeting between business, city and university officials Thursday, the city received its first designation as a SmartZone from the state.

A SmartZone is an area in a city meant to house businesses with a focus on technology, East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton said.

"One of the obvious reasons to create (a SmartZone) is to have jobs for our residents, but more importantly, to create jobs for the people graduating from Michigan State," he said. "There aren't as many job opportunities for them in Michigan."

SmartZones provide businesses with planning, grant writing and tax incentives.

The city is actively working to become more of a cutting-edge place to open and operate a business, East Lansing Mayor Sam Singh said. The downtown area is being molded into a hot spot for technologically savvy companies.

"This is an opportunity for us to really start economic development around technology," he said. "We are looking to attract new technology companies to the area. Having designated SmartZone provides us with tools and resources for the expansion of these businesses in our community."

Drawing people to East Lansing requires the city to provide certain incentives, like a SmartZone, Singh said. It takes more than just being a university town to bring people here, he added.

"One of the projects we are working on right now is to create a technology incubator," he said. "We want to have 15,000 to 20,000 square feet for new technology businesses to locate. Oftentimes, companies need space and services that can be provided by an incubator."

Alex Terrazas, president and chief scientist at MediaBalance, Inc., said his company moved to Albert Avenue from his East Lansing residence on Aug. 1 because it has the right atmosphere.

Open for about four years, MediaBalance works to incorporate technology into the psychological treatment of obesity, attention deficit hyperactive disorder and autism.

"Michigan's economy is changing and there is a lot of effort to bring in these new knowledge-based companies," Terrazas said. "The reason we want to be downtown is we want to be right next door to MSU."

The changing feel of the downtown area coupled with the presence of MSU should be strong enough to bring several new businesses here, Singh said.

"There's a lot of opportunities when you have a university in your backyard," he said. "A lot of faculty are creating a lot of new technology. Those businesses can be located anywhere, so we are aggressively recruiting them and hope some of them will end up in downtown East Lansing."