Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
Gov. Deval Patrick on Aug. 9 announced the site for a computing center that officials hope will have a catalytic effect on the local economy.
The Holyoke High Performance Computing Center, a joint project involving the state and several Massachusetts universities as well as the technology companies Cisco Systems and EMC Corp., is designed to benefit from the same resource that boosted the city in its industrial heyday: ample access to water and hydroelectric power. The site, formerly occupied by a fabrics manufacturer that went out of business last year, borders one of the city’s canals.
The consortium of schools – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts, Harvard, Northeastern, and Boston University – is seeking plentiful, inexpensive electricity for the computing center, which will be connected to each campus by fiber-optic lines.
Hydropower dams on the city’s canals supply about 65 percent of the city’s energy needs, according to Holyoke Economic Development Director Kathleen Anderson. She said that the city, which owns its own utility company, will look to add wind and solar power as a means of meeting the computing center’s needs while underscoring the city’s commitment to green technologies.
The computing center, which is expected to be up and running within two years, is likely to employ only about 20 people. But both the city and the region are expected to benefit from the center’s presence.
“Along with research comes people who are interested in doing research,” Anderson said. “There are other businesses that will want to be around this type of facility.”
The Innovation District Design and Development Task Force, a group whose members include Holyoke Mayor Elaine Pluta and Linda Dunlavy, executive director of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments, is analyzing means of maximizing the benefits of the computing center.