DISTRICT Tour Dispels Campaign Gloom

Focus on talent, not taxes. Focus on growing companies that come here and want to be here, not dying ones that left.

Local pols heard that message in Fair Haven as they entered a different world from the one depicted on this year’s gloomy gubernatorial campaign trail.

They heard that message during a tour that took place Thursday evening at the new innovation and technology hub on James Street called DISTRICT. Co-founder David Salinas led the tour for some alders, a legislative aide and two reporters.

His message: Look at all this energy and progress. Therein lie clues to how to build on it statewide.

Salinas spoke of how in less than a year DISTRICT is just about filled up with companies growing from, in one case, four to 24 employees within months.

Based on what’s happening on James Street, he said, he believes Connecticut should be talking this campaign year about how to build on those successes to fill skilled jobs.

He broke from the consensus — at least among the two leading gubernatorial candidates — that the number-one challenge facing the state is figuring which taxes to cut.

“It’s not the taxes,” Salinas said of what Connecticut needs for a brighter future. ​“It’s the talent.”

DISTRICT began operating this year in a rebuilt former CT Transit bus depot. Salinas invited the guests to talk about how the campus is shaping up and get the word out about the planned Dec. 15 opening of the East Coast branch of a novel Silicon Valley-funded and designed tech training outfit called the Holberton School. He’s hoping that as many as 2,000 people will apply for coveted slots. (Read a previous story about the school here.)

The school is DISTRICT’s answer to doing something about the dearth of tech and innovation hiring talent challenging Connecticut’s emerging employers, including the kind of engineers Holberton School trains.

A failure to align education policies and curriculums at both the K‑12 and post-secondary level with businesses’ needs has led to computer science graduates ultimately not working in the industry said Salinas, who founded a digital marketing company in New Haven called Digital Surgeons.

The Holberton School’s two-year software engineer training program is not for the faint of heart, he said. But with engineers in such high demand, even people without colleges degrees can make nearly six figures in entry-level jobs if they have the right skill set. Holberton School aims to provide that, he said. And its graduates get hired.

About $5 million has been raised to run the school. Another $1.5 million is being raised to provide a ​“life fund” for students so they don’t have to work while they’re in the program. Salinas said he wants New Haveners to have a shot at those slots, so he urged Alders Frank Douglass of Dwight and Charles Decker of East Rock to spread the word.

“You need to be 18 and up” to apply, he said. ​“But if you’re coming up to 18 you can still apply. There also is no cap on the age.”

Decker said he’d seen the school facilities, which are located inside DISTRICT, in their earlier stages. He said it was good to see how close they now are to being finished.

“I’m happy to spread the word,” he said. ​“New Haven has many strengths but we still have to stem a job crisis.”

Changing Minds

Salinas said when he and his partner Eric O’Brien pitched their plan for DISTRICT and then subsequently won the bid to actually develop it, people told them flat out that they thought it would fail. The campus now boasts floating co-working space and 10,000 square foot offices that can be built to specification.

“There’s a lot of demand” for space, he said. ​“There’s almost too much.”

After opening at the beginning of the year, DISTRICT has leased 75 percent of the space. It hasn’t yet decided from among a couple of businesses seeking to fill the rest of the space, Salinas said. The organization is looking for the right mix: It turned away conventional legal offices but said yes to Murtha Cullina, which wanted to try providing onsite legal advice on intellectual property and other services directed to creatives.

In addition to the workspaces, the campus is expected to open The Stack, a 6,500 square foot onsite barbecue restaurant and beer garden which will be led by Jamie ​“The Bear” McDonald of Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ and Black Hog Brewery’s Jason Sobocinski sometime in November. There also will be an outdoor amphitheater. The Mill River Trail that borders the campus is all clean between Humphrey and State streets and ready for walkers and bike riders. Once the Mill River is dredged, a kayak launch will be ready to go.

“People thought we were crazy,” Salinas recalled. ​“But now when they see it, they can’t believe it. There’s a buzz about it.”

Alder Douglass chairs the Board of Alders Community Development, which helped shepherd government approval for the DISTRICT plan through City Hal. He was feeling the buzz Thursday.

“This is great,” he said.

Salinas outlined mantras that guide operations at DISTRICT:

• Get shit done.
• Celebrate everyone’s success.
• Believe in people.

He said many coworking spaces that offer office space, common space, and meeting space don’t offer a community. Without community, such ventures fail, he argued. He said DISTRICT seeks to create ​“community collisions” so that the ​“sparks” from those meeting minds will create innovation.

Salinas said he has resisted the ​“tech hub” designation and added ​“innovation” because DISTRICT is more than tech.

“It’s a mindset,” he said. ​“It’s creative disruption.”

He said he wants those seeking to lead Connecticut into the future to have that type of mindset at the local, state and federal levels.

“We need to elect leaders who think like that,” he said, ​“people who understand innovation. I mean we have a guy in here who is using innovation to rebuild knee ligaments right here in New Haven.”

He suggested that people stop thinking about New Haven as the midway point between New York and Boston. Instead, he suggested, people should focus on New Haven as a hub for every other major urban center in the state.

“People in Stamford don’t want to go to Hartford,” he said. ​“People in Hartford don’t want to go to Stamford. The same is true for New London. The same is true for Danbury. But everybody will come to New Haven.”

Right off I‑91, DISTRICT is angling to lure those people to meet there.

He pointed to a new startup created by University of New Haven graduates called The Scroll Network that operates out of DISTRICT. Though it’s not a unicorn (valued at a billion dollars), it has in a short time grown from four people in an open co-working space to 24 employees who now have their own office in the building.

That happened in New Haven. Not Boston. Not New York. Not in Silicon Valley.

“I want people to be proud of New Haven, not just because it’s New Haven,” he said. ​“I want them to be proud to be in Connecticut.”