Tighe & Bond lauded for role in Holyoke computing center

Date: 7/16/2014

WESTFIELD – During its 21st awards celebration in Boston last month, the Environmental Business Council of New England (EBC) presented Tighe & Bond with an award for its role in developing the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC).

The EBC named this state of the art data center, which sits on a former industrial site in Holyoke, the James D.P. Farrell Brownfields Project of the Year. Tighe & Bond was one of several key project contributors to receive this award on behalf of the MGHPCC’s success.

Three years in the making and completed in November 2012, the $165 million MGHPCC transformed a historic Holyoke canal mill complex into a gleaming Massachusetts success. It also heralded in a new age of revitalization for this former paper mill city. 

The purpose of this project was to prepare an abandoned industrial property for redevelopment into an energy-efficient 90,300 square-foot data center to support the growing computing needs of five of the most research-intensive universities in Massachusetts. This includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Massachusetts, Northeastern University, Harvard University, and Boston University; together they are known as the MGHPCC consortium.  The historic collaboration among the consortium, state government, and private industry has been hailed by some as the most significant collaboration among government, industry and public and private universities in the history of the Commonwealth.

Tighe & Bond’s contributions to this project, which achieved LEED Platinum certification in 2013, included demolition engineering, permitting and remediation services to clean up the former 8.5 acre Mastex Industries site prior to the MGHPCC’s construction.  Specifically this encompassed coordination of project funding, hazardous building materials surveys, building demolition design and coordination, creative building debris reuse, environmental permitting activities, assessment and remediation of contaminated soils and groundwater, urban fill soil management, and multi-disciplinary engineering services.

Other key contributors to this project’s success include: MGHPCC Consortium, Massachusetts Governor’s Office, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, MassDevelopment, Holyoke Gas & Electric Department, City of Holyoke, MIT Department of Facilities, Cisco Systems, EMC Corporation, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, Leggat McCall Properties, McCarter & English, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Turner Construction, and Haley & Aldrich.

More information on the MGHPCC can be found at Tighe & Bond’s MGHPCC Brochure or www.mghpcc.org.

The EBC is a nonprofit organization that was established in 1990 by environmental and energy company executives. Each year, EBC recognizes companies, organizations and individuals for outstanding environmental and energy accomplishments in the promotion of a sustainable, clean environment through the EBEE Awards Celebration.