nothin Business Innovation Lounge Opens At DISTRICT | New Haven Independent

Business Innovation Lounge Opens At DISTRICT

Allan Appel Photo

Sallinas and city arts director Andy Wolf model one of the lounge’s “bus stops.”

DISTRICT co-founder David Salinas joined local officials in deploying over-sized golden scissors Wednesday morning to cut a blue ribbon to inaugurate a new Comcast Business Innovation Lounge” space in the heart of the emerging tech hub’s campus on James Street in Fair Haven.

The lounge is adjacent to the soon-to-open innovative Holberton school for software engineers and DISTRICT’s Drive,” a co-working space that already has 200 members.

Fifty companies have already opened up shop at DISTRICT, which has been open less than a year on the site of a former CT Transit bus depot. The lounge is designed as a meeting place of minds when those minds want to take a break from their studies, their start-ups, their jobs and maybe advance their dreams

DISTRICT’s businesses and tech schools are operating out of shiny large spaces fashioned out of former repair bays for buses. In a similar nod to another kind of TOD, or transit oriented design, the future digital lounge lizards will be lounging on mobile furniture, complete with advertisements, and fashioned in the shape of a rectangular, covered bus shelter, with the top absent.

The adverts too are not for products. They convey DISTRICT’s philosophical values, said Salinas.

Ribbon cutters Gov. Lamont Chief of Staff Ryan DraJewicz, Comcast’s Paul Savas, State Sen. Prez Marty Looney, and DISTRICT’s Salinas.

Designed by Urbane, New Havens Carla O’Brien (she and her husband Eric are co-founders, with Salinas, of DISTRICT, the bus stops are covered, wheeled spaces with a bench. In some instances, they can open up to embrace a pillowed couch as well.

They are specifically designed with a nod to the transit heritage of the location, said O’Brien.

Normally about four or five of the bus stops are in the lounge along with high rise tables, and other chairs will inhabit the lounge, along with two large screens carrying Comcast’s WiFi, along with a high definition video wall featuring X1 business video service.

Of course, along with checking out the markets, you can watch anything else, said Comcast’s marketing specialist, Tyler Weed, who was setting up and demonstrating.

The lounge is adjacent to the Holberton School of Software Engineering, said the school’s director, Nadine Krause.

Their first cohort of students has already been selected, 31 strong, and selected entirely by computer, with no human interaction, eliminating bias, said Salinas. They are scheduled to begin the two-year program on Jan. 28.

Holberton School, adjacent to the large-screened lounge.

Krause was full of praise for the lounge, which is adjacent to the school’s quarters, because the students will be able to pop out from their cubicles and monitors, and go into the adjacent lounge where“people and ideas can collide.”

Members of DRIVE, the co-working space, are also welcome to be digital lounge lizards. Salinas said that DRIVE is the largest and most successful co-working space in the state.

The lounge is not open to the public at large. Because of all the tech equipment on the DISTRICT campus, you need a password to enter the building.

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