Tech Collective moves to Rising Sun Mills

TECH COLLECTIVE THIS WEEK moved its headquarters from Davol Square in Providence to the Rising Sun Mills at 166 Valley St.
TECH COLLECTIVE THIS WEEK moved its headquarters from Davol Square in Providence to the Rising Sun Mills at 166 Valley St.

PROVIDENCE – In the next 3 ½ years, Tech Collective will be providing information technology training for more than 400 long-term unemployed Rhode Islanders.
They were tasked with this responsibility last winter and shortly afterward it became apparent that the information technology and bioscience industry association’s previous space in Davol Square was too small. So this week Tech Collective moved its headquarters to the Rising Sun Mills, at 166 Valley St., a space Dassault Systemes vacated when it moved to Johnston last year.
The new space will serve as a technical and collaboration hub featuring a training facility, event space and expanded organizational operations, according to Tech Collective.
“For nearly the past 20 years, Tech Collective has worked to foster the growth and innovation of Rhode Island’s technology community,” said Kathie Shields, Tech Collective’s executive director, in a statement. “Our move to the Rising Sun Mills is both a culmination of that work as well as step forward in its expansion.”
Tech Collective, along with Workforce Solutions of Providence/Cranston and the Workforce Partnership of Greater Rhode Island, received a $7.5 million federal grant last year to develop job training for middle- and high-skill job placement in the IT industry, focusing specifically on the unemployed.
U.S. Sen. Jack F. Reed helped deliver the federal support as a member of the U.S. Appropriations Committee and he lauded Tech Collective for its efforts.
“This dynamic new space at Rising Sun Mills will help strengthen Tech Collective’s network and develop a direct pipeline of homegrown talent to fill good-paying technology jobs here in Rhode Island,” Reed said in a statement.
More than 75 percent of IT employers say they anticipate expanding within the next four years, according to a study conducted by Tech Collective last year, but many struggle to find workers with applicable skills to fill job openings.
Tech Collective will use the grant funds to identify and train “long-term unemployed” Rhode Islanders, those who have been out of work so long they’ve fallen out of the unemployed statistics.
The group, with 12 employees, has doubled its staff since 2012 and will occupy 8,500 square feet of the 120,000-square-foot mill.
Jay Fluck, executive vice president and partner at CB Richard Ellis, is the commercial real estate broker who represented the owner and he says he’s pleased to have Tech Collective as a “lead tenant” at the mill.

“We anticipate that Tech Collective will serve as a catalyst to attract similar and compatible uses,” Fluck said.
Tech Collective will hold open recruitment throughout the duration of the grant. Eligible applicants must be unemployed, eligible for work in the U.S., at least 18 years old and hold a high school diploma or GED.
Tech Collective is already working out of the mill and will hold an open house sometime in June.
“The new space will allow us to provide enhanced industry skills training to employed and unemployed professionals, facilitate business to business connections and continue to raise awareness of these two vital industries,” Shields said. “We look forward to sharing our space and its new opportunities with the Rhode Island IT and bioscience industries.”

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