(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced both the designation of the Holyoke Innovation District as the 20th Growth District in the state and up to $25 million from the state to move forward on the construction of Holyoke’s High Performance Computing Center (www.InnovateHolyoke.com).
According to the Monday announcement made during an address to the Holyoke Chamber of Commerce, this latest investment is the government’s latest investment in a long line of job growth and development efforts for Western Massachusetts. Combined with commitments from academic partners, the University Consortium, a total of $65 million has been leveraged move the project forward towards its groundbreaking this fall.
“These investments are critical to ensuring that the High Performance Computing Center will move forward to support job growth and advances in innovation, technology and research,” said Governor Patrick. “This groundbreaking project will serve as the anchor of a competitive and vibrant growth district in the Pioneer Valley.”
The HPCC project will support long-term job growth and create a world-class, green, high-performance computing center in the city. The Center will provide an infrastructure for a collaborative research agenda including investigations into life sciences computing, clean energy and green computing, and will foster innovation in downtown Holyoke, powered by green, cost-competitive energy.
The state government’s announcement is an reinforcement of the work first started by a collaboration between the Governor, private partners EMC and Cisco, the City of Holyoke, the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and the University Consortium comprised of MIT, the University of Massachusetts and Boston University. Northeastern University recently joined the Consortium and has pledged $40 million towards construction of the facility.
Over the last 120 days through a collaborative planning process, the project partners have determined it will move forward with due diligence on two proposed sites, Mastex and Open Square, with a final decision expected late spring or early summer. Both sites are within the newly designated Holyoke Innovation Growth District and eligible to benefit from Growth District Grant funds.
The University Consortium is planning on starting to search for an executive director next month to lead its efforts in moving the project towards completion. The project will also move forward with the release of an RFP for design and engineering services with an anticipated start date of early May, and the formation of a non-profit corporation to oversee operations in the HPCC.
Holyoke was one of the first planned industrial communities in America, and, in an interesting development, Cisco has signed an agreement with the city to to rebuild it as Cisco’s first US “Smart+Connected Community” and to develop a new pilot for the “Neighborhood of the Future” in the city. Working collaboratively toward a common vision of Smart+Connected Communities, the city and Cisco intend to use technology to deliver urban services in an innovative way in order to generate new economic opportunities, improve the delivery and quality of education. Population retention is also expected to be a positive externality in a city that, according to US Census statistics, has been in a population decline since the 1960s.
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