The owner of District Hall, a startup community hub in Boston’s Seaport, is bringing on a former program manager and director at the center, Becky Donner, to run it as it undergoes renovations and prepares to reopen in summer 2024.
For 10 years, the Roxbury nonprofit Innovation Studio — which also runs the Roxbury Innovation Center — has managed operations and programming at District Hall. As Innovation Studio’s time running the space winds down this year, WS Development, which purchased District Hall as part of its acquisition of the Seaport Square project, is preparing for its next stage.
WS Development agreed in a 2017 updated development plan to operate District Hall as an innovation center for another decade after Innovation Studio departs.
Emails shared with BostInno show that WS is bringing on Donner as the new executive director of District Hall. Yanni Tsipis, senior vice president at WS, confirmed the new hire, saying “Becky is a very well-respected leader in Boston’s innovation community and we are thrilled to welcome her to the WS team.”
Donner was previously the program manager and then-director of District Hall from 2015 to 2018, during which time Innovation Studio, formerly known as Venture Café, was running District Hall as a civic innovation center.
District Hall has been in operation since 2013, before the Seaport was known as a well-heeled, bustling business neighborhood. The innovation center was created through 10-year payment in lieu of property taxes (PILOT) agreement between the Boston Planning and Development Agency (formerly known as the Boston Redevelopment Authority), CIC and an arm of the investment bank Morgan Stanley, which owned the property. CIC held the lease for District Hall and contracted Innovation Studio to manage operations and programming for the space.
The decade-long PILOT agreement ended on June 5, 2023, and Innovation Studio will host its last event at District Hall on Dec. 8.
District Hall’s new executive director most recently worked as a freelance consultant in civic innovation and creative placemaking, according to her website. Donner is also the co-founder of the nonprofit Run En Masse, an organization that supports equal representation in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Donner was also formerly a principal at Hourglass Collaborative and a lead organizer of Code for Boston.
As previously reported by BostInno, District Hall will close at the end of 2023 for renovations and will reopen in the summer of 2024.
Tsipis said Donner will “be leading the next chapter in District Hall’s evolution as the hub of Boston’s innovation ecosystem here in the Seaport.”
While WS moves forward with its plan, other parties have been looking at new ways to use District Hall.
BostInno reported in November that the Boston Planning and Development Agency is exploring ways to repurpose District Hall in the Seaport — including its potential use as a library and for housing.
A BPDA study conducted around when the PILOT program was ending this year found that District Hall’s 8,000 square feet of flexible spaces, like a kitchen, meeting rooms and auditorium, “can be repurposed for library needs.”
WS has not publicly indicated in any filings that it is considering converting the space into a library or housing. At the time, WS declined to comment on the BPDA study.
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