Site visit: Headquarters Boston, new shared space for making stuff Posted by Scott Kirsner March 1, 2012 07:43 AM
By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist
I've been curious to check out Headquarters Boston, a new shared space in Boston's Marine Industrial Park geared to companies, non-profits, and artists that make and fix stuff. The anchor tenant, Geekhouse Bikes, just moved into the space in mid-February, and founder Marty Walsh (pictured at right) invited me to stop by yesterday.
Walsh started Geekhouse, which custom-crafts steel bikes, in 2002. The company had been operating out of 1,000 square feet in Allston, but Walsh had a vision of a larger space that could also house other makers and artists who didn't mind the smell of welding fumes. HQ Boston is 24,000 square feet, and the rent is about $10 per square foot. He calls it a "co-working space for artisans and creatives."
Already, Walsh says he has found tenants for half of the space, including visual artists, sculptors, a cabinetmaker, and the maintenance operation of Hubway, the Boston bike sharing network. "The concept is that it's hard for product makers to find a place where they can freely do their thing, whether it's making musical instruments or snowboards or furniture," he says....
Entrepreneurship
Bolt, new accelerator program for start-ups designing physical products, looking to put down roots in Boston
Link | Comments (1) Posted by Scott Kirsner February 17, 2012 04:00 PM
By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist
Boston has been home to two major "accelerator" program so far: TechStars Boston and Y Combinator. And both of them have focused almost exclusively on start-ups developing Web sites, mobile apps, and software-as-a-service offerings. (Y Combinator, of course, now operates exclusively in Silicon Valley.)
pic-einstein.jpgBen Einstein wants to change that. He's out raising money and laying the groundwork for a new accelerator program, Bolt, that would focus exclusively on entrepreneurs who want to design physical products. Einstein, previously a principal at the product design consultancy Brainstream, moved from Northampton to Boston last month to make Bolt a reality.
Einstein says that Bolt will focus on "connected devices," including consumer electronics and robotics, but avoid medical devices and other products that would require extensive, blank-sheet-of-paper engineering. "We're thinking mostly about off-the-shelf components being combined in new ways, where you might have a new device that works with a web service, or plugs into a mobile phone," he says. Bolt's offices will include useful tools that the chosen entrepreneurs will have access to, such as drill presses, band saws, 3-D printers, PCB prototyping equipment, and CNC milling machines....
Regional Economy
The Innovation District's Four Neighborhoods
Link | Comments (7) Posted by Scott Kirsner February 13, 2012 11:39 AM
By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist
I've been thinking lately that Boston's Innovation District is really composed of four distinct neighborhoods, when it comes to clusters of innovation-related companies. So I created the Google map below.
You have to squint really hard to ignore all of the great financial services, fishing, and brewing activity that takes place in the district. It's also home to Au Bon Pain's headquarters, a working dry dock, the Boston Convention and Expo Center, and a couple of vast parking lots.
It's not yet easy or enjoyable enough to walk between the four neighborhoods, and because they're so spread out I suspect there isn't much interchange between people who work in, say, Fort Point and the Marine Industrial Park. The MBTA's Silver Line connects two of the neighborhoods — Fan Pier, where the MassChallenge building is located, and the Marine Industrial Park — but the other two are a decent walk from Silver or Red Line stops. Hopefully, as the district grows up, there will be more connectivity between these four pockets of activity.
My four-subzones are:
Fort Point Channel. The oldest and most neighborhood-y of the four zones. Still home to working artists, as well as hang-outs like Lucky's, Flour Bakery, and Papagayo. This area has the highest density of innovation-related tenants, including electronics recycler Gazelle, Greentown Labs, Skyhook, and, later this year, the digital agency Allen & Gerritsen. The district's lone venture capital firm, OpenView Venture Partners, throws great parties on their roofdeck during the warm months.
- Channel Center. To distinguish this new development along A Street from Fort Point Channel, I prefer to call it "Flash Sale Alley," since it's where the luxe online retailer Rue La La is based. A 60-person R&D lab, the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems, is moving in later in 2012. (The Rodney Brooks start-up Heartland Robotics is not quite in Channel Center, and not quite in Fort Point Channel. I'm hoping they can attract at least one more robotics company to Wormwood Street so we can call it Robotics Row.)
- Fan Pier. The first office tower at Fan Pier, One Marina Park Drive, houses more than 100 small start-ups; the building's owner donates a full floor to the MassChallenge competition. (As it fills up with paying tenants, MassChallenge could be squeezed out.) But Vertex Pharmaceuticals is building its new headquarters next door. It's the first major drug company to move from Cambridge to Boston, and about 1,500 people will work in the pair of 18-story buildings. Maybe we'll soon call it "Pharma Pier"...
- Marine Industrial Park. Filling up with companies that design new organisms, mosaic-making robots, and energy storage systems. Everyone bumps into one another at the Au Bon Pain on the first floor. The complex has less to do with the marine world than it once did, but the cinder-block-walls still make the place feel pretty industrial.
