State officials tour Holyoke to find ways to promote the once industrious city to current businesses.

Once a thriving industrial city in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Holyoke, Mass. has seen better days. Now rampant with buildings tagged with graffiti and broken windows, many industries packed up and left town years ago.

But, Michael Sullivan, Holyoke's Mayor says the locations are still prime.

"We're thinking, and looking for all different kinds of ideas," Sullivan said. "What's one man's junk is another man's gem. And what we sometimes see as unattractive and unusable, others see as a great advantage," he added.

Sullivan took a tour of Holyoke Friday with State Senator Michael Knapik (R-2nd Hampden and Hampshire), State Representative Michael Kane (D-5th Hampden). They were joined by Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, Dan O'Connell and Assistant Secretary Greg Bialecki.

The primary goal of the tour was to look at options and reasons for businesses to build or relocate in Holyoke.

"It's a lot better to reuse existing buildings in the Commonwealth than to fill-in open space that is so precious to us," O'Connell said. "These are real assets - these buildings, and we need to treat them as such."

But, one of the biggest projects planned for the city is the "Canal-Walk", a brick walkway that would extend along the canal, with the hopes of bringing new life to a downtown area that, for the most part, has fallen in disrepair.

The Canal-Walk is scheduled to begin construction later this year, turning a largely industrial area into a recreational one.
Sullivan said he wants to see shops and cafes along the path.

Meanwhile, O'Connell plans to urge businesses to think about Holyoke, due to its plentiful resources of building space, water, hydroelectric power, and high-speed broadband services.

"We need to work with the city to identify a number of smaller tenants that can help be the catalyst to get another building going, and another building going," O'Connell said.