Distressed Property in Holyoke

Holyoke, Massachusetts is the perfect place to buy distressed real estate. Along the banks of the Connecticut river, the factories which once powered the Holyoke economy idle. With the ebb of Holyoke's industrial fortunes has come the economic decline characteristic of all the old Mill towns, and which has left the entire city with a legacy of poverty. The recent economic crisis has only exacerbated what here is an old problem: and it is in one innovative use of old property at a time that the solution to the old Mill funk (which is rapidly becoming the “all-America funk”) can be found. I know what I'd want to do with my part of the solution. I'd use that space to start a company selling Linux computers.

Why this particular business?

I've a tendency to have a one-track mind, which in this case comes in handy. In buying this property, I'd aim for a (temporary) home and a place of work, and a way to help the American economy whilst also advancing a cause I believe in and, hopefully, making a tidy profit. The business model of my firm – as with most open-source business models – would benefit from low to nonexistent software development costs, reducing the barriers to entry into the market. The enthusiasm and existing quality of the Linux community and software likewise will assist in scaling the firm by providing a natural market and by contributing code and bugfixes. This business model would aim to address most of the problems of Linux (which are economic and political) by borrowing from the strategies pioneered by Apple against the Microsoft monopoly.

The Linux operating system is the catchall term for the dozens of software stacks built around the free and open source Linux kernel. Clumped into distribution...

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...he general decline in American manufactures has not made our current crisis any easier to deal with. For a long time, they have been seen as problems, not opportunities for investment, and with reason. Only a a naïve youngster with an ideological attachment to a product would take his business into the depressed, troubled husk of a city. Nevertheless, the Great Recession was caused by an overabundance of houses used, not for their true value as places to live and work, but as chips in a game of financial poker in which all the houses eventually lost. Investing in property for the true value of the place isn't just a needed change in behavior: it's the first step in reclaiming the down-to-earth entrepreneurship America needs to survive in a changing world. I look at a place like Holyoke and I can't think of a more fitting place to lead America out of the past.