Uptown Consortium Inc. (UCI) hosted an Uptown Insights virtual panel on Tuesday, August 17th to discuss the new Digital Futures building in the heart of the Cincinnati Innovation Corridor. The Digital Futures building is one year from opening. The session featured exciting programmatic updates on the building, which will provide a transdisciplinary space to bring together University of Cincinnati (UC) experts for collaboration that will impact our community, region and global society.
The Digital Futures building is the centerpiece of the Digital Futures Complex, a $200 million mixed-use project that began in 2019 and is being developed by Terrex Development & Construction and Messer Construction. A topping out ceremony was held in 2021.
UCI President and CEO Beth Robinson was joined by four representatives from UC for the session — Dr. Patrick Limbach, Vice President for Research and Professor of Chemistry for the university, Dr. Margaret Powers-Fletcher, Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and clinical microbiologist, Dr. Farrah Jacquez, Professor of Psychology and co-chair of the Community Change Collaborative, and Renee Seward, Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator for the Communication Planning Program at the university’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning.
Limbach started the presentation by explaining the project and mission statement of the Digital Futures building. “We want this to be a place that is an open place, an invitational place where faculty, students, and staff from the university come together outside of their college homes, but where also individuals from the business community and other organizations can come work with us and co-create solutions to those problems that matter.”
The building will be 180,000 square feet with six floors. It is being designed by the university’s Associate Vice President for Planning, Design and Construction John Seibert in collaboration with architects at GBBN. It will include the following spaces:
Two floors (60,000 square feet) of workspace available for lease by corporate partners
Fifteen or more Advanced-Tech labs (Cyber Security, AI, AR/VR, sensors, robotics, UAV/CAV, Design, Hypersonics, Recording Studio, IoT and more)
Five or more major core facilities and service centers (Visualization lab, AR/VR facility, E/Circuits lab, High-bay space, and High Performance Computing Infrastructure)
Twenty or more suite meeting, classroom, and huddle spaces
5,500 square feet of event/performance space
One Marquee, immersive storytelling/exhibition space
“This is very open, flexible, inviting space,” Limbach said. “It is meant to really bring in a lot of outside light and make this feel like a collaborative environment where lots of exciting things could happen.”
The Digital Futures building is strategically located in the Cincinnati Innovation District to allow faculty and students from the University of Cincinnati to work in close partnership with government, industry, and community partners. Together along with UC’s 1819 Innovation Hub – the innovation nerve center where large, mid-sized and start-up industry partners, students and faculty collaborate – they will work on impactful research and development to accelerate and commercialize ideas and start-up and spin-off new businesses.
“It strikes me particularly after we’ve all lived through a pandemic and so forth, how important digital skills are to everyone,” Robinson said. “It’s not just an academic exercise for folks in certain fields, right? It really cuts across our entire society, from going online to order food or to book your vacation, it just seems like it really jumped out at us this past year of how much our society has changed and really the digital revolution. It strikes me that UC has always led in this area, but now you’re bringing it out of the campus in the academic setting and you’re really turning it out to the community and inviting people in and trying to solve real, practical problems. I find that very, very exciting, and I think there’s so much opportunity.”
Jacquez emphasized the community component of the facility and its connection to the work she does as co-chair of the Community Change Collaborative, or C3.
“One of the things I’m most proud of in this city is that we are doers,” she said. “We are a community of people who are doing amazing things. From C3, we want to connect academic researchers with those assets that already exist in the community. We want to stop and/or switch around the idea that you come to us and we want to go to you. We want to take the university and connect them with those assets and figure out how we can amplify the assets to help contribute to positive change.” She added that the real definition of success is what has changed in the community based on community academic research.
Powers-Fletcher also pointed out the collaborative effort of her work as a scientist. “A lot of my work is related to infectious diseases, either through education or improving diagnostics. But as we all know, infectious disease affects the entire community, and there are a lot of perspectives that are important for helping solve these challenges.” She added that she works closely with colleagues in the College of Arts and Sciences in the Mathematics and Geography departments and investigators with UC Libraries.
Seward drew upon her experience of having grown up in Avondale, and how important it’s been for her to reach back out to her community. “I’ve been happy to have been able to go into some of the Cincinnati Public Schools and work with the educators and administrators and the students so that what we’re developing works like a glove for all entities.”
Then, Limbach highlighted the variety of job opportunities that will be available. This will include things like food service and support staff, but also professional staff. “We have needs for new researchers that come in as research technicians, research staff. Often, I think individuals might forget, but many of us in our labs, research techs, are entry-level type positions to get into a research lab." The breadth of job opportunities is expected to grow as the building opens, he added.
Even more so, Limbach said he wants the entire community to feel welcome and comfortable walking through the doors of the Digital Futures building. “Our vision is to have it set up that anyone in the community that walks through that front door, there will be someone there asking how we can help and where we can connect them.”
Jacquez discussed some partnership projects C3 will be working on, including a climate justice project with GroundWork Cincinnati and a design and architecture project with DAAP. A third project will be a public history project on Avondale with several community and academic partners working together to tell the story of the Avondale community. She also discussed her work with Latino immigrants to improve health and systems for that community.
Powers-Fletcher discussed her partnership with local high school faculty members and students from Saint Ursula Academy, a secondary women’s school, to assist with developing software. She commended the idea that these young women would be able to use the Digital Futures space to get more involved with medicine, computer science, business, public health and other areas.
Robinson concluded the panel by mentioning other improvements to the Avondale area that will come about because of the building. “One of the things that we work on at the Consortium is a lot of placemaking and planning work. So, we are working on some exciting transportation connectivity projects for an Uptown Transit Center, we are working with UC Health on that. We’re also building in pedestrian connections and bike paths, and we’re working on designing a greenway that will provide some outdoor space.”
The grand opening for the Digital Futures building is scheduled for August 2022. Learn more about the Digital Futures building here.
Watch the full Digital Futures presentation here. UCI hosts Uptown Insights panels on local and national topics and the next one will be held in October.