“I tell people all the time, we accidentally bought a building,” said Aaron Miltenberger, executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the San Luis Valley.
The HUB: Nonprofit Innovation Collaborative, which sits on the corner of San Juan Avenue and Sixth Street in Downtown Alamosa, is the Valley’s first non-profit “coworking and innovation center.” The facility is home to workspaces where partners of the Boys & Girls Clubs can find quiet space to work, to meet and to create.
A ribbon cutting on Friday was held with a good group of locals and elected officials.
The event was more of a formal kick-off. The Boys & Girls Clubs has been operating out of The Hub for more than 18 months and during that time a lot has happened and been added.
Miltenberger called The Hub “more than just a physical location. It’s a platform for possibility. It’s where collaboration, innovation, and entrepreneurship take root in a uniquely rural way – deeply connected to land, people and place.”
Alamosa Mayor Ty Coleman said, “Your efforts will have lasting impacts on Alamosa and the San Luis Valley.”
The newest additions to The Hub are a commercial kitchen and outdoor gear library. These open the door for possibilities in what can be created in the community. The commercial kitchen is just that – a space large enough, clean enough, and certified for a person or a business to use.
For example, Sixth Street’s newest restaurant Luchas Tacos, Tequila & Taps is using the kitchen as an extra space to launch from.
The kitchen is state-of-the-art and wall-to-wall stainless steel. It sports industrial ovens and stoves, refrigerators and plenty of storage space. A subscription service will allow for people to use the space over long periods of time. Day rates will be available for those who just need to use the kitchen for special events.
The Hub also has a space used by Alamosa’s Area Health Education Center, or AHEC. Every Wednesday, AHEC provides a needle exchange program, also known as “harm reduction” for people who use drugs to replace their needles with new, sterile ones. AHEC also provides HIV and Hepatitis C tests to the public during these days.
Among the newly minted additions to The Hub, the most exciting is perhaps the gear library.
The gear library will slowly roll out gear rentals, but it will soon be a space where outdoor gear is available to the community.
Garrett Marquez, the outdoor adventure director for the BGCSLV, took a small group on a tour of the building. The newly debuted gear library took the cake. Walls filled with bikes, stand-up paddle boards stacked like wood, shelves full of backpacks, tents, sleeping bags and sleeping pads, rain gear, and a station for bike repair took the spotlight.
The gear library isn’t open to the public just yet. It will first be for community partners such as Generation Wild and in-house youth programs led by the Boys & Girls Club. The idea is to eventually open it up to the community so that families and friends can get the right kind of gear they need to have successful, safe outdoor adventures.
“Right now it’s really primarily focused on helping some partners who are doing youth-serving activities to get them out and get them all the things they need,” Marquez said.
Things like rain jackets were a needed addition, he said. “We really thought if you take a group of kids out and they’re cold and they have a miserable experience then they’re not gonna want to go out in the outdoors again. So we want to make sure they’re warm, they have all the different pieces they need, so they can have a really successful outing and enjoy the outdoors and then start to do that on their own.”
People mingled, enjoyed snacks and took the space in. From the street The Hub doesn’t seem like a large space, but back in the day it was a car dealership and the old bones are still there. It’s a space that has endless possibilities.
“Let’s open a new chapter,” Miltenberger said. “One fueled by shared space, shared purpose, and the belief that we are all better when we are all better and this community is the most powerful engine for change.”
