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HardTech Holyoke Draws on Innovative Momentum in Paper City

By
Cofab Design Partner Mike Stone
Environment and Engineering Special Coverage

Meeting of the Minds

Cofab Design Partner Mike Stone

Cofab Design Partner Mike Stone

 

When Mike Stone looks around Holyoke — and some of the innovative companies that have set up shop there — he sees a city with several unique advantages.

“First of all, the cost of energy is low, which is great for companies with electrical-heavy processes. Then there’s the amount of available space,” said Stone, CEO of Cofab Design, a Holyoke-based studio that develops hardtech products (more on that term in a moment) and the strategies to produce them.

In addition, he noted, “there are about 60,000 students in the Pioneer Valley, plus an industrial workforce that’s been here for more than 150 years. That’s not to say it’s the same as it was 100 years ago or 150 years ago, but there are still a lot of precision manufacturers, and there is a manufacturing workforce base here.

“So you have folks that know how to scale processes and do manufacturing, and you have the sort of innovation coming from the Five Colleges, plus the Boston-New York corridor, and I just think we’re uniquely positioned here to be able to kind of leverage that and offer second-stage space.”

“It makes much more sense to grow a base here and have a little bit more room to stretch out and grow. So that’s the vision, and hopefully more companies will take note.”

HardTech Holyoke, the second event of its kind (the first took place in 2023), highlights some of the innovative companies that are growing in Holyoke. The gathering, held on June 18 at Open Square, brought attendees face to face with the minds behind growing companies like Clean Crop Technologies, which is developing new ways to remove contamination from seeds and foods; Sublime Systems, which is developing an innovative cement manufacturing process; Xenocs, which uses X-ray technology to analyze nanoscale materials; and florrent, a maker of supercapacitors for energy storage, to name a few.

As opposed to software, Stone said, hardtech refers to more physical technology. “It’s a wide net — it covers advanced manufacturing, clean tech and green tech, even things in the defense space, energy, food and ag tech. It’s sort of an amorphous term, but the throughline here is folks that are building physical things, which takes a different form of investment and attitude than building software or building other types of businesses.”

Dan White says Holyoke has been attractive to many innovative companies

Dan White says Holyoke has been attractive to many innovative companies, for reasons ranging from competitive utility rates to a supportive city government.

And Holyoke, located not far from major innovation centers but offering a lower cost of doing business with a host of amenities, is the ideal spot to grow a hardtech hub, he added.

“It’s hard to compete on innovation. There are people innovating here, but you can’t compete with Boston or New York in terms of density of schools, and we know the attraction the cities have,” Stone explained. “But for a Clean Crop, when you’re spending money in Cambridge or Somerville for a bigger space, it starts to be disadvantageous, and it makes much more sense to grow a base here and have a little bit more room to stretch out and grow. So that’s the vision, and hopefully more companies will take note.”

 

Selling a City

HardTech Holyoke was conceived in 2023 when FORGE, a nonproft that helps innovators with physical projects navigate the journey from prototype through to commercialization, teamed up with Cofab, Clean Crop, and the city of Holyoke on a gathering to celebrate the startups, engineers, researchers, manufacturers, and others building new physical products in and around the city.

“So we put an event together, and we expected 50 people to show up, but 100 people came, and there was a good buzz,” Stone recalled. “There was a good sense after the event that people found it a good place to connect and network with this community. So we’ve been trying to do it annually ever since.”

It actually took about a year and a half to get the second HardTech launched, but attendance topped the first, drawing about 150, as did the number of participating companies. “It’s a bigger format, and we have a bigger space here, and we’re really appreciative of the folks at Open Square who donated space for this,” he noted at the start of the June 18 event. “I’m kind of leaning into the exhibit theme — I like to think of this as an art gallery opening night for manufacturing companies.”

“I think we have a chance to re-industrialize in a grassroots way and build cool stuff while also building robust manufacturing jobs, which left Holyoke 40, 50 years ago.”

Inside that ‘gallery,’ along with the participating companies’ exhibit tables, were displays explaining what Holyoke brings to the table in several categories, including:

• Energy and water, including the lowest regional energy costs, a high percentage of renewable sources, access to power infrastructure through Holyoke Gas & Electric, and high water supply and wastewater treatment capacity for water-intensive processes;

• Space and location, including 1.5 million square feet of industrial space available in the city, local development resources, turnkey hardtech startup spaces, pre-zoned industrial parcels, access to I-90 and I-91 connecting to major cities, airport access, and regional rail and bus lines;

• Talent and workforce, including an existing manufacturing base, a rich higher-education ecosystem, technical training programs, and workforce supports like MassHire; and

• A number of other factors, from a strong local industrial supply chain to available pools of both public and private grant funding.

Alex Nichols says he and his two co-founders of florrent took advantage of some specialized equipment at UMass Amherst

Alex Nichols says he and his two co-founders of florrent took advantage of some specialized equipment at UMass Amherst for early prototyping, then decided to stay in the region.

“We want to pitch why we’re here, why some of these other companies are here, and just try to get that into a communicable message where other people can say, ‘oh, there’s something going on in Holyoke,’” Stone said. “We want to show why it’s a good place, specifically for hardtech companies that are past their startup stage and into their scale-up stage.”

Companies like Clean Crop.

“Right now, we’re focused on seed treatment and finding ways to reduce overall pesticide use, so we can displace a lot of existing tools and give growers the same yields or better,” co-founder Dan White said. “We found a really strong initial market in leafy greens. So we’ve got quite a lot of demand that we’re just growing into right now, but we’re on track to expand our facility here to full utilization by the end of this year. And then the next step will be establishing our first facility in California sometime next year.”

White said it’s gratifying to see HardTech Holyoke grow since its first inception.

“When I look across at these other companies, the same reasons that we came here are why I think a lot of other folks are coming as well. We have really competitive utility rates, particularly electricity. But also, the city government has been incredibly helpful, and the ecosystem partners like Cofab are a huge part of the story too.”

Alex Nichols is one of three founders of florrent, a Sunderland-based startup that took part in HardTech Holyoke. The company is developing a material innovation that enables performance improvement in supercapacitor technologies.

The founders, Nichols explained, are UMass Amherst alumni who wound up using specialized lab space on that campus after they graduated. “They have some very specific equipment that allowed us to do early prototyping. That really brought us to the region. We stayed, we hired a team out here, and we’re here to stay.”

 

One Company at a Time

Stone said growth toward making Holyoke a hardtech hub may be gradual, but every step is meaningful.

“It’s a small city, so one company moving to the city a year could be meaningful for workforce development, which I think is a big part of this,” he told BusinessWest. “I think we have a chance to re-industrialize in a grassroots way and build cool stuff while also building robust manufacturing jobs, which left Holyoke 40, 50 years ago.

“So I think it’s a unique opportunity to do social impact work and create good jobs and create workforce training programs, and have some fun building some really novel, groundbreaking technology and utilize the infrastructure that was started 150-plus years ago in Holyoke; we can have a little bit of a repurposing for some of these tech companies.”

A wave of cannabis companies started moving to Holyoke over the past five years, he noted, and for some of the same reasons.

“I think that crest has peaked. But I think, over the next five, 10, 20 years, there will be a lot of this hardtech stuff. I have my ear to the ground because of Cofab, and there’s been a sea change over the past three or four years where a lot of people are trying to build stuff like this. And we’re able to take advantage of that.”

Celebrating 150 Years

By
Holyoke’s canals gave the city water power — and an identity.
Community Spotlight Cover Story Features

The Paper City Looks Back — and Ahead

Holyoke City Hall

Go just about anywhere in the Paper City — City Hall offices, manufacturing facilities, the local utility, restaurants, some cannabis dispensaries, anywhere — and you will find pictures of what would be called ‘old Holyoke.’ And some images of the new Holyoke as well.

They’re everywhere. Pictures of the old but still-standing mills, the canals, Mount Tom, High Street in a different age, the Hadley Falls Dam, and especially City Hall, the iconic Gothic Revival structure built in 1871 that is, in many ways, the symbol of this historic city.

These pictures you see everywhere are visible evidence of the enormous pride people from this city, or now doing business in it, take in Holyoke.

You see this this pride in every community in Western Mass., from the small towns in Franklin County to the capital of the region, Springfield. But in Holyoke, it’s … well, different. And it just seems like there is more of it.

This much is made clear in the stories that follow in this special section commemorating the city’s 150th birthday. People from Holyoke take a special pride in being from their city, and for many reasons.

There is history — this is the country’s first planned industrial city. There is architecture. There are landmarks. There are institutions. There is tremendous diversity. There is the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Road Race. Mostly, though, there are people — those who lived a century and more ago, and those who call it home today.

As the city turns 150, there is much to celebrate, and certainly not all of it is in the past, although the past is what many people like to focus on.

There was a time when Holyoke was a model industrial city producing some of the finest papers and textiles in the world. The mills producing these products created thousands of jobs, enormous wealth, and tremendous prosperity.

The city’s fortunes changed, obviously, as these mills closed or moved south or overseas starting just after World War II. For decades, the city was in decline, even as it remained a center of jobs and manufacturing.

Today, there is a sense of revitalization and vibrancy, with new leadership, especially Joshua Garcia, the city’s first Hispanic mayor, and an economy that is far more diverse and fueled by everything from a surging creative-arts sector to a cannabis industry that found in Holyoke a welcome mat, millions of square feet of old mill space perfect for cultivation and even dispensaries, and inexpensive, green energy.

Another factor powering this revitalization is entrepreneurship. Through the efforts of EforAll, the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce, Holyoke Community College, and other agents of change, Holyoke residents, and especially those making up the minority majority, are creating new businesses, from restaurants to dance studios to fabric shops, that are changing the face of High Street — and the entire city.

These stories and many others are told in the pages that follow. Together, they tell of a city with momentum. A city with vision. A city with renewed optimism about what can be done when people work collaboratively. A city that has a lot to celebrate.

 

Holyoke. Wanna Make Something of It?

By Darby O’Brien

 

Unless you’re from Holyoke, you probably won’t get it.

We’re a little like Southie on the other side of the state. Hardscrabble Holyokers have grit and never quit. Holyoke is a city with soul. It’s a city of neighborhoods. Churchill, Elmwood, the Flats, the Highlands, Oakdale, and Springdale. As Liberty Bank President and Holyoker Dave Glidden says, “you can take the kid out of Holyoke, but you can’t take Holyoke out of the kid.”

Just look at the cast of characters that came out of this place. Start with the famous drummers. Hal Blaine, a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, played with the legendary Wrecking Crew on 40 number-one hits, and Ronnie Hurst played in Steppenwolf. Holyokers Michael and John Shea wrote the Notre Dame fight song. We have Emmy-winning actress Ann Dowd. Alan Eisenstock was a writer and producer on shows like Mork and Mindy, Sanford and Son, and Family Matters. My nephew, Lenny Jacobson, is another one you’ve seen on the tube, from big-time TV spots to shows like Nurse Jackie, and he just won the 2023 JFK Award.

We’ve also got Neil Sheehan, the New York Times writer who released the Pentagon Papers and won a Pulitzer Prize for his book A Bright Shining Lie, considered to be one of the best books about the Vietnam War. Mitch Epstein is a world-renowned photographer. Frank Leja, who lived down the street from me as a kid, signed as a ‘bonus baby’ with the New York Yankees at 17. To this day, he’s the youngest player ever to appear in the pinstripes. The list goes on. Maybe it’s in the water. We’ve got four reservoirs. They’re all closed for fishing now, but we sneak in and cast a line anyway.

Another thing unique to Holyoke is the game of Pickie. We invented the game in the streets and alleys downtown. Just saw off your mother’s broom for a bat, and grab some Pee Gee balls, and you’re set. It’s always been a sports town. Betsy Frey carries on the family business at Holyoke Sporting Goods, probably one of the last independent sporting-goods stores left. Part of what keeps it going is the boatload of Holyoke merchandise she sells in the store, especially around parade time. You’ve heard about Holyoke’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, right? One of the biggest in the country.

The late “Made in Holyoke” rapper Justin Chavez said, “it’s a city full of pride and hope, a city that’s alive.” My old buddy John Hickey, who was the Water and Power chief, coined the slogan “Holyoke. Best City by a Dam Site.”

Damn right.

 

Darby O’Brien, a Holyoke native, is the owner of the marketing and public relations firm Darby O’Brien Advertising in South Hadley.