Envisioning Holyoke as a College Town

Opinon

By James E. Samels, Arlene L. Lieberman, Michael Moriarty, and Jacob Brewer

Long before bowl games and Sweet Sixteens, college towns celebrated their venerable roots at places like Harvard in Cambridge; Yale in New Haven, Conn., and Princeton in Princeton, N.J. Consider the proliferation of neoclassical destination college towns across America over the last century — campuses like Amherst, Boulder, Champagne, Durham, Ithaca, Madison, etc.

Destination college towns typically attract students, faculty, families, and year-round visitors because they offer something for everyone. Destination college towns may be small, yet they thrive — with great public schools and prep schools, vibrant downtowns, family discovery centers and tourist attractions, upscale amenities, on-campus concerts, charming villages, and safe, walkable neighborhoods.

With a proud history as the largest paper manufacturer in the U.S., the 15 neighborhoods that now make up Holyoke are among the most diverse in the Commonwealth. With a strong Irish and Latinx population, it is no surprise that Holyoke is home to the second-largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the U.S. and Fiestas Patronales, the region’s largest showcase of Puerto Rican music, cuisine, and culture. Volleyball lovers rejoice as they enter Holyoke, the birthplace of American volleyball and home to the Volleyball Hall of Fame at Holyoke Heritage State Park.

Founded in 1971, OneHolyoke CDC is a community-development organization dedicated to improving housing for Holyoke residents. Since its establishment, the organization has created more than 160 new homes in the Flats, Churchill, and South Holyoke neighborhoods; rehabilitated hundreds of apartments; and provided thousands of home-improvement grants to homeowners through the Neighborhood Improvement Program.

OneHolyoke builds new homes, improves and manages a portfolio of multi-family buildings, and, in partnership with the city, offers loan and grant opportunities to property owners who need to improve their properties. OneHolyoke has a particular focus on the value of home ownership, both for the families it serves and for the social and financial well-being of the city of Holyoke.

OneHolyoke CEO Michael Moriarty’s hope is that “young people will grow up and love being from Holyoke.” That can be difficult for those growing up in poverty, but we (as a community-development corporation) can certainly take the edge off.

There are a lot of good things happening in Holyoke. Housing, residential, and mixed-use win-win partnerships drive non-tuition revenue streams for both college campuses and towns; hence, destination college towns are less dependent on conventional tuition revenue. Both colleges and towns highly value non-tuition revenue from consumer market demand, tourism, retail, entertainment, and auxiliary enterprises.

“As an institution of opportunity, Holyoke Community College sees itself as an economic and workforce-development engine within its region and in the city it calls home,” HCC President George Timmons said. “I am proud to be the fifth president of HCC, and I am committed to the growth of our community through excellence in education, which meets the needs of our citizens and of area businesses. HCC looks forward to the development of creative partnerships and innovative projects to further the needs of the individual to get a job, to get a better job, and to learn how to do the job better, all right here in Holyoke.

“I am confident that Holyoke has numerous opportunities for growth,” Timmons added. “We recognize that a focus on workforce skill development and the encouragement of an entrepreneurial infrastructure can move the city forward. Holyoke is where we are located, college is what we do, and community is who we are.”

To this end, destination college towns deploy underutilized and underleveraged real-estate assets. These high-value assets collateralize off-campus residential growth opportunities and create a downtown renaissance. Beyond downtown, these partnerships build new, intergenerational residential living and learning communities located at underutilized historical homes and buildings.

Towns know that public-school rankings and reputation drive up property values. Thus, destination college towns value highest and best use. This means creative mixed uses like student, faculty, and staff housing; artist lofts; design and media studios; bookstores; cafes; organic bakeries; multi-ethnic bistros; boutiques; gift and memorabilia shops; microbreweries; live entertainment; and bowling, billiards, and axe throwing.

As a practical matter, colleges and universities are among the largest local employers and economic forces that drive downtown redevelopment. These destination college towns ignite active participation in town-gown relations, with school superintendents and municipal officials participating in on-campus events and college officials serving on municipal boards and community organizations.

In the end, destination college towns are built on mutual respect, economic interdependence, and collegial sympatico — the kind of partnerships that are sustainable and impactful in the near future and over the long run.

James E. Samels is president and CEO of the Education Alliance. Arlene L. Lieberman is senior associate of Samels Associates, Attorneys at Law. Michael Moriarty, executive director of One Holyoke, and Jacob Brewer, graduate of the University of Chicago and Alliance Research fellow, are contributors to this article.