Cambridge Innovation Center Turns 10; Looking Inside a Landmark for Boston-Area Entrepreneurs
Wade Roush12/3/09Follow @wroush
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EnerNOC, one of the biggest Boston startup successes of this decade, because CEO Tim Healy visited Rowe at the CIC while scouting for office space. (EnerNOC went elsewhere, but Rowe says that’s exactly that kind of serendipity that makes it so logical for him to be part-time landlord, part-time venture partner.)
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Trial by Fire
The CIC’s 10-year ride hasn’t been without its bumps. On the morning of December 8, 2006, an oil-filled electrical transformer in the basement caught fire, filling parts of the One Broadway building with thick black smoke. Ironically, the people trying to escape the building suffered the worst smoke inhalation; the building’s architects, it turned out, had placed the air intake for the emergency stairwell directly adjacent to the emergency exhaust port for the electrical vault.100 tenants were hospitalized.
The fire “shook us to our core,” Rowe says. “We were closed for five weeks, and we had 150 Cambridge startups on the street. Almost anything could have happened.” But with MIT’s help, Rowe and his staff were able to find enough temporary office space for everybody in the building, much of it at One Memorial Drive and 640 Memorial Drive. The CIC staff itself found temporary shelter in an abandoned deli at 290 Main Street (now home to Cosi). When One Broadway was cleared for occupancy in January 2007, all but five of the 150 CIC tenants moved back in.
And in the end, where else would they have gone? The Cambridge Innovation Center is unique in the Boston area—and may in fact be home to the single largest collection of startups in the world. The Plug and Play Tech Centers in California are the CIC’s closest competitor, hosting about 200 companies across six locations in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.
And in another 10 years, Rowe predicts, the CIC will be twice as big as it is now. “Our target is 500 companies,” he says. When I suggested that he’d have to build another building to hold that many people, Rowe said he’s already in negotiations to take up to 50,000 square feet of additional space. He also pointed out that there are plenty more floors to be assimilated at One Broadway, and that in the era of Web 2.0 and co-working spaces, many companies might have just one or a few workers. “There’s enough room,” Rowe says, “if we fill out the nooks and crannies.” And if he gives up his desk.
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