The Gate’s Art Gallery building in the Acre Neighborhood of Lowell, MA. (Image: Richard Howe via Flickr.)
For example, many of Lowell’s makers were encountering growing pains at the time of the technical assistance workshop—they were desperately looking for opportunities to scale. A zoning code prohibited craft businesses in the Acre and there wasn’t much of a pipeline to sustain the workforce.
To address the zoning code, Lowell made some changes that would allow new and expanding makers into the Acre and Upper Merrimack Street. Craft businesses were allowed in the neighborhood by the end of 2017—which has helped attract mixed-use development—and the area is already experiencing an uptick in minority and low-income business owners that are capitalizing on a storefront improvement program, microloans, and other initiatives the city has had in place for years.
On the workforce front, the city worked with a network of local advocacy organizations to help recruit and train local workers. One of those groups, Coalition for a Better Acre—a community development corporation—helped provide Acre residents soft skills training. The group also secured $75,000 from the Commonwealth’s Urban Agenda grant program last month which will go toward preparing high school students for advanced manufacturing careers.
Pierre Tusow of Koto Brewing Co. explains his five-barrel beer brewing system. (Image: MagicValley.com)
SGA also advised Twin Falls to work with regional real estate developers to expose their hot market for investment. Since then, developers from Boise and Sun Valley, ID have begun targeting the warehouse district and old buildings are being revamped to serve as new homes for companies like Cavalli Corp., and Milner’s Gate, and Melni Connectors—the highly successful small electrical connector startup that we featured in 2017.
But as new businesses have moved in, Twin Falls was faced with its own housing shortage, particularly when it came to workforce and low-income housing. This prompted the city to expand relationships with regional developers to also include new residential projects downtown. Now, Twin Falls is seeing some of the first multifamily projects in over a decade and there’s a special consideration for workforce housing. There are also plans to turn a city-owned parking lot into a colony of furnished micro-dwellings.