Holyoke, Massachusetts

9 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 10 a great children’s museum that brings 70,000 visitors a year to Holyoke. We are really thinking, hey, you’re coming to the children’s museum, we want to make sure you stay and have lunch.” Adding public art throughout the community is another effort to support businesses, attract visitors, and beautify the surroundings. “We’re an old mill town, and we’ve gone through some tough times, so we have some blighted areas. As we work together with business and private industry to bring in public art, everyone sees the benefit, and their www.exploreholyoke.com website seems to prove that,” Vega says. With so much on the agenda already, the city hopes to attract ancillary cannabis businesses in the future, supporting the industry in much the same way the paper industry did in Holyoke’s early days. “Cannabis is great to employ people, but the market is going to change over the next couple of years,” Vega says. “One of the things that we think could make it stay stronger in Holyoke is to have the packaging type great rates for businesses and new builds. Hoping to see it taken one step further, Vega remarks, “We’re working on that last mile, we would love to have HG&E run the Wi-Fi and the wireless networks right to everyone’s home.” Working to secure its reputation as a unique and international food destination, diversity is the name of the game in Holyoke. “Even during COVID, we had six new restaurants open up, and these are really homegrown,” reports Vega. The cities growing entertainment scene includes Gateway City Arts, a performance facility that brings in known international and national names at least three times per week. “That’s been really great to see, and the restaurants kind of follow that,” he says. With an added focus on tourism, Holyoke is also working to find ways to connect visitors to the various local attractions. Vega acknowledges, “We see some of our tourism attraction as our diverse and unique restaurants in authentic Puerto Rican and international foods. We have