BIC to open smaller site at Mass MoCA

By Tony DoBrowolski

PITTSFIELD — It’s not easy to get to the Berkshire Innovation Center if you live in the Northern Berkshires, and it’s especially difficult for students who don’t have a car.

But the BIC is solving that problem by bringing its services closer to where these residents reside. The center is planning to open a second, much smaller location, in North Adams in a recently vacated 2,500-square-foot storefront at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

The new facility, BIC Works@MoCA, is expected to open this summer and is the first step in a phased growth plan that the center eventually hopes will allow it to provide easy access to its services for residents who live in other areas of the county.

“We’re trying to get out and meet them where they are,” said the BIC’s Executive Director Ben Sosne.

The BIC currently has no plans to open another facility in Southern Berkshire, although Sosne said the innovation center did put in a proposal for a facility in the former village school in Housatonic when the redevelopment of that building was under consideration.

“We were dabbling in that as a possible southern location,” Sosne said. “I think we will want to one day do that, but we want to do everything at pace.”

BIC Works@MoCA will be located next to Bright Ideas Brewing in a former art gallery that became available when the owners moved to another location in Williamstown, Sosne said. He would like to open the facility this summer.

“We hope to take advantage of the summer crowd,” he said. “I’d like to get the doors open in July and August then have more of the programming ramp up when the students return [in the fall].”

Located in the William Stanley Business Park in Pittsfield, the $13.8 million

Berkshire Innovation Center is a two-story, 23,000-square-foot structure that opened three years ago following more than a decade of planning, which included finding the necessary funds to build it.

The BIC contains classroom, meeting and conference space interspersed with laboratories and high-tech equipment available for use by its 30 member companies, 23 affiliate organizations, and 12 academic institutions. The facility was designed to provide Berkshire County with a gateway to the high-tech economy that has been blossoming in other areas of the state, particularly in and around Boston.

BIC Works@MoCA will be staffed by innovation center personnel and will contain some of the equipment and services that are available in Pittsfield.

“It will have some of the advanced technologies, a robotic arm, 3D printers and laser printers, some of the technologies that we use with virtual reality,” Sosne said

“We can run similar programming, but also have professional development and field trips,” Sosne said. “It’s much of the same stuff that we have at the BIC, just on a smaller scale.”

According to an executive summary of the expansion plan, BIC Works@MoCA is intended to serve as a gateway into the growing BIC community, a showcase for the cutting-edge technology developed both in the Berkshires and across the state, and as a “launchpad” for new pro- gramming designed to extend and widen the onramps to technology-focused career paths.

“I’m really excited. It’s something that we’ve been contemplating for quite a while as an organization,” Sosne said, referring to the BIC’s expansion plans. “One of the biggest challenges we see as a countywide organization is about access.

“We do a lot with students and student groups, young students, high school students, college students, and one of the things we’ve noticed is that especially for those that are less privileged, who don’t have a car, don’t drive or have to rely on a friend, that it’s hard to get to the BIC,” he said.

“If you live in North Adams or Housatonic and you want to participate in BIC programming it’s a 40 minute drive each way, which is hard.”

He referred to Mass MoCA as a “perfect location” for such a facility in North Adams due to the foot traffic the museum already receives and its central location in the county’s second largest city.

“I’ve always thought of North Adams as a natural partner because it’s the other city in Berkshire County,” he said.

Mass MoCA is also located on the site of the former Sprague Electric Co., a sprawling factory complex that at its peak was one of northern Berkshire’s largest employers. The site itself represents the confluence of creativity and innovation in the Berkshires that the BIC is part of, Sosne said.

“I’ve worked with Joe Thompson for many years,” said Sosne, referring to Mass MoCA’s former director. “I like [current director] Kristy [Edmunds] and what she’s trying to do.”

Tony Dobrowolski can be reached at tdobrowolski@berkshireeagle.com or 413-496-6224.