New Bedford’s waterfront is already bustling with the colossal maneuvers of offshore wind construction – there are cranes assembling turbines taller than the city’s biggest buildings, and ships arriving with blades as long as football fields.
But on Monday, Mayor Jon Mitchell announced the city’s latest play in the industry: creating more office space for the industry’s white collar workers, many of whom are clustered in larger cities and state capitals like Boston, New York and Providence.
The city will lead a $3 million renovation of a building it already owns at 1213 Purchase Street, aiming to reopen the third floor as a flexible office space where international maritime and offshore companies could rent space on a short-term basis during a wind farm’s development.
In his remarks at a press conference attended by Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Moller and Avangrid Chief Development Officer Ken Kimmell, Mitchell said the office space would function as “a crash pad of sorts” for offshore wind developers, contractors and maritime businesses.
“It’s almost like a circus, right?” Mitchell said about offshore wind construction. “People just sort of muster around the thing, and then they go to the next place and the next place.”
“As a marshaling port,” Mitchell continued, “we need to make sure that companies can set up here and do their thing as seamlessly as possible. They can get connected to the workforce. They can connect with the building trades. They can connect to other businesses on the waterfront and off the waterfront.”
Floor plans show a total of 14 rooms that companies could lease, as well as a shared conference room, and a space dedicated for the New Bedford Ocean Cluster, a nonprofit that facilitates connections between wind developers and local businesses and contractors in New Bedford.
Mitchell said that half of the project’s anticipated budget — $1.5 million — would be federally funded via the American Rescue Plan Act, and the other half would be contributed by Vineyard Wind, the offshore wind developer currently marshaling its first construction project out of New Bedford. Vineyard Wind, however, does not have plans to move into the space, as the company already rents office space in another building downtown.
Derek Santos, the director of the New Bedford Economic Development Council, said the city hopes to complete the renovation by the end of summer 2025. Part of the renovation includes a repointing of the building’s brick facade, Santos said, and the timeline could be delayed if weather conditions are harsh this winter.
The building under renovation, the city-owned Quest Center for Innovation, is a former technical college for the textile industry constructed in 1899, Santos said. It later housed UMass Dartmouth’s arts college, and was repurposed in the early 2000s as flexible office space for government agencies, nonprofits and small businesses. The Quest Center currently houses a coworking space, an arts nonprofit, and the city’s health department.
After the renovation, city officials said the Quest Center’s currently empty third floor would be geared toward established maritime and offshore wind businesses.
A separate building on MacArthur Drive, closer to the city’s waterfront, is being developed by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center as an incubator for startups looking to break into clean energy industries.
