David Salinas
An unanticipated search for office space served as the impetus for New Haven’s newest coworking space, and a donation from Comcast will pave the way for a new business incubator and education center scheduled to open in early 2019.
District New Haven is the brainchild of David Salinas, a marketing executive who’s looking to fill a niche in the local startup ecosystem. The 18,700-square-foot coworking center has attracted 125 members from approximately 35 companies since opening in February.
“Connecticut was for many years a very innovative state, but there was a bit of a lull,” said Salinas, who sees potential to build off Yale University’s research in areas such as biotech and quantum computing. “Connecticut is so small, it requires the urban centers to embrace each other. It’s our mission to be a centralized hub and middle ground for companies that have facilities in both New York and Boston.”
A native New Yorker, Salinas attended the University of Bridgeport and gravitated toward New Haven for his first post-college job, where he co-founded a marketing agency named Digital Surgeons. After a developer acquired the property where the company was based, Salinas started looking for a new office space and focused on a vacant 195,000-square-foot former bus depot owned by the state Department of Transportation. After a 2015 request for proposals, Salinas was selected to acquire the building for $1 in March 2016.
Since then he’s invested $25 million on renovations and environmental clean-up, aided by a $6 million state grant, to transform the sprawling facility into the city’s newest startup hub. The building is 70 percent leased, Salinas said, including office space occupied by individual companies and a 15,000-square-foot fitness club. A restaurant and beer garden operated by the owners of Bear’s Smokehouse and Black Hog Brewing will open in September.
District New Haven’s next milestone is the projected January 2019 opening of District Innovation and Venture Center, which will serve as a business incubator and provide educational programs in areas such as software, data science and entrepreneurship. Comcast last month announced a $700,000 contribution in cash and in-kind services, including ultra-high-speed Internet and VoiceEdge phone service for the centers.
