UMass Downtown Celebrates Grand Opening
Ribbon cutting for the grand opening of UMass Downtown on March 13, 2024. (L-R) Tony Maroulis Micah Ariel James, Nancy Buffone, Barry Roberts, Javier Reyes, Lynn Griesemer, John Kennedy, Scott Swane.Photo: Art Keene
UMass Downtown, a multipurpose retail, event, and meeting satellite space in Amherst’s central business district celebrated its Grand Opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday, March 13. The store is located at 108 North Pleasant Street.
The space serves as a welcome center for prospective University of Massachusetts students and their families, a hub for town-gown interaction with community members, as well as a boutique retail satellite and campus information center during regular business hours. In the evenings, the space will regularly host small lectures, readings, and workshops.
The venue contains retail space for UMass gear and a small conference room. Large digital screens are mounted on the walls of the retail space displaying a stunning slide show representing the full range of activities on the UMass campus. The site will also serve as a ticket outlet for UMass events. The store will. have its own web site, expected to go live soon, which will include a calendar of events for the venue.
Guest speakers at the grand opening were UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes, Amherst Town Council President Lynn Griesemer, and UMass Downtown Director Micah Ariel James.
Reyes said, “Through this store, which is also a gathering space, we hope to showcase many of the great things from our campus and invite you to a deeper involvement with us. This is not a space for UMass Amherst but a space for our entire community,”
Nancy Buffone, Vice Chancellor for University Relations and a principal in developing the project said in a previous interview, “One of our goals is to draw people to UMass Downtown through frequent events of 40 or fewer people,” she said . “Our goal is to develop programming that will also positively impact our local restaurants and downtown businesses. Additionally, we look forward to future direct business-to-business partnerships and participating with programming by the Amherst Business Improvement District and Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce.”
Among the first community events to be held in the space will be a reading and book discussion on April 9 at 4:30 p.m. entitled “On Translating My Language Is A Jealous Lover.” Victoria Offredi Poletto and Giovanna Bellesia Contuzzi will read from and discuss their translation of Adrián N. Bravi’s My Language Is a Jealous Lover, which won the 2024 Mass Book Award for Translated Literature. This is a Mass Book Awards Speakers Bureau event, sponsored by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. For more information, visit the MA Literary Events Calendar.
UMass Downtown will be managed by the Office of Community Relations and University Events, in partnership with UMass Auxiliary Services. Other campus partners include UMass Athletics, Student Affairs and Campus Life, the Dean of Students Office, Admissions, and the UMass Amherst Foundation.
