The wait is over! d!g buffalo is opening its doors (officially) on Monday, March 24th! The new co-working space, located in the Thomas R. Beecher, Jr. Innovation Center at 640 Ellicott Street, is designed for those in the early stages of developing a business or an idea. d!g, which stands for design innovation garage, will represent a range of creative, mechanical, and operational industries, driving the creation of new possibilities, new collaborations, and new partnerships. Part of our mission at the BNMC, Inc. is to support entrepreneurs and help grow businesses to create jobs. For us, d!g is more than a space, it’s a community of changemakers.
Our new digs were designed by faculty of the Department of Architecture and undergraduate and graduate students from the Situated Technologies Research Group: Prof. Omar Khan, Prof. Laura Garofalo, Michael Kirschner, John Geisler, Kathryn Hobert, Philip Gusmano, Joseph Swerdlin and Nicole Halstead. Omar Khan, Associate Professor and Chair of the department of architecture at the University at Buffalo, was one of the original visionaries for d!g. For Omar, it was somewhat personal as he had seen too many of his talented students lured away to other cities by a creative vibe and culture –he wanted a way to keep those students in Buffalo.
So why d!g? d!g will have mentors on hand during the day to help our innovators working on various projects. Plus, d!g will also have a Curator on staff to help facilitate networking among innovators and develop programming for the space. We’ll have networking and programming events to encourage conversations among our innovators and experts. d!g is an affordable option for entrepreneurs currently working at home, start-up companies looking to be a part of a larger community, families of patients looking for a place to work while visiting loved ones at the hospitals on the Medical Campus, a site for satellite offices – anyone looking for an environment to help foster productivity and success. We’d also like to add that d!g, which is located on a former loading dock in the renovated Trico Products Corp., building, complete with a glass garage door overlooking the Medical Campus, is a really, really cool space. Really.
d!g is free the week of March 24th to people who are joining as of April 1st. Have you been interested in trying out the co-working scene? Eager to tour d!g first hand? Stop down the week of the 24th anytime between 9am-5pm and check out our new digs.