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Date: 6/19/2015
CHICOPEE – Mayor Richard Kos announced several technological innovations that he believes would make downtown Chicopee a more welcoming place.
Thanks to a partnership with MassIT, part of the downtown now has free Wi-Fi. Dubbed “Chi-Fi,” Kos believes the city will be able to expand the coverage area in the future. He credited IT Director Vanessa Oquendo with the development of the project.
The city has not used any budget money for the free Wi-Fi, just “sweat equity,” according to Oquendo.
Kos also showed a bench that has a solar-powered telephone charging station. The “Soofa” has been installed near the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority bus stop near City Hall.
Kos explained the Soofa was developed by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates in 2014 and the one in Chicopee is the third one in the state and the only such unit in Western Massachusetts.
Kos sees both features along with additional parking as “incremental” ways of improving the downtown. He noted the redevelopment of the Lyman Mills building into a live/work space would help redefine downtown.
He also noted the appearance of the first “pop-up” store in the city at 26 Center St. The clothing store operated by End.Studios (www.end-studios.com). Kos noted two young people operating the store took a storefront that had been vacant, cleaned it up and found a use for it for a month.
According to its website, the two owners, Nate Achorn and Zachery Rinvil would operate the store for just this month and is offering space to local artists to sell their products and merchandise.
Kos said the city has sent out a Request for Proposals to assess the feasibility of offering one-gigabyte Internet service to the city, which would be much faster than Internet service presently offered.
The one-gigabyte service would be attractive to businesses, Kos said.
“Very few places offer that,” he explained. The city already has a fiber optic “backbone” on which the service could be delivered, he said.
Kos said, “These are great additions to our downtown. This makes the downtown an attractive destination for businesses and visitors. Coupled with new additional parking, Chicopee Center is continuing to make its way back and that’s a positive thing for our city.”