Yesterday, the M2D2 Innovation Hub opened up in Lowell and I
hopped in a car with Workbar co-founder Bill Jacobson and his director of
community development Alexa Lightner to drive up
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Alexa, the smiling face of Workbar at
the start of the day's journey |
to the ribbon cutting, shake some hands,
eat some prefab Caesar salad and hear lots (and I mean “lots!”) of politicians take their 2 minutes at the mike when it came time for speeches.
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UMass president Marty Meehan, one
in a long line of speakers at the mike |
To be fair, the pols were excited and they had every reason
to be. What UMass under the leadership of president Marty Meehan and Lowell campus chancellor Jacquie Moloney has been able to
accomplish in this building near the Hamilton Canal is
impressive. The transformation of an old industrial site into a
place where entrepreneurs, 3-D fabricators and people in lab coats are starting companies represents a huge step for a city that was home to
the American Industrial Revolution but has seen harder times since.
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| Bill (r) with Steven Tello of UMass Lowell (c) |
Bill and Alexa had their own reasons to be there. Workbar,
the shared work space model already in Cambridge and Boston, will operate the shared space in Lowell. One of the greatest innovations of the 21st century surely must be the increased sharing of resources, adding to their value by extending their availability. Workbar represents that and has proven its efficacy in hotbeds like Cambridge. Pushing that model out to underserved areas was on the minds of all the speakers at yesterday's event, and they let it be known.
The Lowell efforts are also highly reliant on partnerships and Workbar is only one of the many that
make this place go. UMass Medical School in Worcester is seen as a critical
part of M2D2's success. Med school chancellor Michael Collins noted the
critical role this joint effort between the two campuses represents.
As someone who's been interested in this topic for quite some time, Lowell strikes me as indicator of how existing resources can be put to reuse in very productive ways. Oh, and it was also just a fun, fun day.
Here are some more photos from the trip ...
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The interior redo on the Canal Street building
is all about light and air. |
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| Long open corridors define the space. |
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| The innovation hub |
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| M2D2 |
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| The old industrial past is never far away |
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| nor is the infrastructure that facilitated it |
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| And here's a cool chair! |
