nothin Lehman On DISTRICT: “This Is The Future” | New Haven Independent

Lehman On DISTRICT: This Is The Future”

Thomas Breen photos

State economic development Commissioner David Lehman and DISTRICT founder and CEO David Salinas.

Mayor Toni Harp, Lehman, and Salinas.

Connecticut’s newly confirmed economic development chief toured New Haven’s bustling DISTRICT” tech campus Friday — and proclaimed he saw the future of the state’s economy.

The development commissioner, David Lehman, whom the State Senate confirmed earlier this week, took a half-hour tour on Friday afternoon of the DISTRICT tech hub at 470 James St. at the gateway to Fair Haven

Friday’s tour of the DISTRICT.

DISTRICT founder and CEO David Salinas, joined by Mayor Toni Harp, acting city Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli, and a dozen other city officials and local economic development boosters, led Lehman on a tour of the former CTtransit bus depot-turned-bustling tech incubator and co-working space. 

Since opening its doors in early 2018, the 100,000-plus square-foot campus already has drawn around 60 business tenants which have 300 to 400 people working on site every day, as well as a new intensive, tuition-free software engineering school, a popular barbecue restaurant, an innovation lounge,” and a fitness center. DISTRICT even has its own city bike share station.

The Digital Surgeons office at DISTRICT.

This is truly an amazing space,” Lehman said several times as he walked through the sun-dappled, industrial-chic facility. You do feel like you’re in San Francisco, but a lot more affordable.”

While a vast majority of the roughly $30 million spent on building out the DISTRICT came from the private sector, Salinas said, he and his co-founder received $6 million in brownfield clean-up loans from the state in order to pave the way for the creation of the today’s tech campus. That money was crucial.

Salinas started the tour in the offices of Digital Surgeons, a digital marketing agency he co-founded over a decade ago. The company’s 40 employees were huddled in small groups in various corners of the office space, brainstorming strategies to improve inter-business collaboration at DISTRICT as part of the company’s quarterly hack-a-thon.

A Friday afternoon ping pong break.

Walking past two employees taking a Friday afternoon ping pong break in the tech campus’s cavernus, bus depot-sized hallway, Salinas showed off the Murtha Cullina Law Lab, where DISTRICT members can receive complimentary legal advice for their businesses.

Across the hallway, he pointed out Suite 16, a soon-to-open podcast studio where members can learn about digital marketing and content creation. Looking down another hallway, he gestured towards the offices of the virtual reality software development company SphereGen.

Our thesis here is that we can bring energy, connectivity, and competitiveness to the region,” Salinas said.

Holberton School students.

Salinas then took Lehman into the 8,000-square foot coding classroom space for the Holberton School, an intensive software engineering program based in Silicon Valley that kicked off classes for its first 29-student New Haven cohort in January. The school doesn’t charge up-front tuition, Salinas explained. Students have to pay for their education only after graduating and getting a job. He said the first cohort is 70 percent ethnically diverse, and roughly half come from the greater New Haven area.

The average starting salary for software engineers in Connecticut is $95,000, he said. The state currently produces only hundreds of computer science graduates every year for a state tech job market that has over 7,000 openings.

Lehman and Salinas.

Salinas said he has already secured $5.3 million to keep the Holberton School running in New Haven for at least the next five years, during which time he would like to see at least 1,200 students graduate. Roughly $2 million of that comes in the form of state aid, including Technology Talent Bridge grants, while the rest has been raised from the private sector.

Will most of the graduates stay in Connecticut?” Lehman asked

I believe they will,” Salinas said, noting that many of the students come from the area and the high local demand for skilled tech workers.

Lehman.

Moving on to Drive, the DISTRICT’s co-working space, Salinas said that all 72 offices are currently occupied with a waiting list of more businesses hoping to move in soon.

One of the anchor tenants of Drive is Scroll, a blockchain company that started out at DISTRICT with just four employees. It has already grown to a workforce of 25. And the CEO’s only 22 years old,” Salinas said.

Acting city Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli with Lehman.

This is the future of the economy,” Lehman said at the end of the tour. He said that, during his tenure at the head of the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development, he will prioritize working with tech innovators like Salinas in other parts of the state to help with brownfield remediation and with funding software engineering training programs.

A lot of this comes down to prioritization,” he said, recognizing that the Gov. Ned Lamont’s debt diet” means that the state will be bonding less for economic development projects than it did under former Gov. Dannel Malloy.

He also said that he will prioritize working with the state Department of Transportation (DOT) to ensure that train travel to and from cities like New Haven is as quick and convenient as possible, and to help Tweed New Haven Airport extend its runway to allow for more air travel into and out of the Elm City.

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