A select crew of Boston’s innovation community crossed the harbor into the Seaport Wednesday evening to break in one of the United States’ first major public innovation centers: District Hall. Architects, entrepreneurs and veteran innovators alike moseyed around the bright, welcoming space and munched on mouth-watering hors d'oeuvres from the building’s recently opened Briar Group restaurant, Gather. District Hall will also open its doors tonight to host yet another exclusive event to further boost the excitement around the building’s completion.
The building, which was privately funded and built by Boston Global Investors, is the realization of a public-private sector partnership that began in 2010, when Mayor Thomas Menino planted the seed for the Innovation District, calling for a gathering space for innovators to collaborate and share ideas.
With nearly three million jobs being created by startups in the United States each year, and around one million positions shed by companies five years or older, the need to fuel innovation economies around the country is becoming increasingly imperative.
Tim Rowe, founder and CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center and founder and chairman of the Venture Café — the foundation responsible for the management of District Hall — broke down the purpose of the Hall for BostInno:
We’re starting to redefine the way we think about what a job is and what a career is. It’s going to be public infrastructure like this that supports the various groups and organizations in Boston that help educate the world about this way of approaching the economy.
District Hall will be an essential part of this revolution for Boston. The building’s goal is to connect entrepreneurs and innovators with each other and with the wider business ecosystem; in Rowe's words, "the clubhouse of the innovation community." Even before last night’s official debut, District Hall had already assumed its role as a community hub. In the last few weeks, the building has hosted a handful of events for different groups and organizations, including Mobile Monday and MassTLC’s Boston TechJam.
“The building is really designed for flexibility above all else,” explained Nicole Fichera, the city’s Innovation District manager. “We really thought about how to make the space work for events of a lot of different scales, from supporting hackathons and debates to breakout sessions and sector meetups, at the same time.”
With multiple meeting “pods,” a lofty and dividable event space and the in-house restaurant and café, District Hall has all the amenities necessary to appease the tastes city’s booming entrepreneurial scene, not to mention additional aesthetics designed to enhance the space’s creative energy, like the entrance room’s ever-changing, rainbow-colored fluorescent lights. The building is designed to be a space for the most seasoned to the most green entrepreneurs to come together, grab a coffee or a beer, riff on ideas and learn from one another.
“We believe innovation is a social process, and that it has always been a conversation,” noted Carlos Martinez-Vela, Venture Café Executive Director.
Photo courtesy of Hacin + Associates
Want an exclusive invite to tonight's opening party at Gather? Follow @GatherBoston and tweet with the hashtag #gatherhere to get one.
