The City of Boston has exciting plans for the Innovation District in the South Boston Waterfront area, and I was lucky enough to get invited to a front row seat as we toured the district and learned first-hand from local business owners exactly how the city’s plans benefit their work and their quality of life.

My name is Dan Futrell and I’m currently working as a Rappaport Public Policy Fellow in Mayor Menino’s office. As a former U.S. Army Infantry Officer and a two-time veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I am seeking to increase outreach to Boston’s 22,000-strong Veteran community and specifically to those veterans and families who’ve served in Iraq & Afghanistan since 2001. Throughout our tour of the Innovation District, I continued to brainstorm how this vibrant and growing district could offer new opportunities to current priorities in the Veteran community: employment, mental health, receipt of benefits, homelessness, and transition from servicemember to civilian.

We began our tour by visiting the offices of Bocoup, a growing software firm that develops technologies for next generation web & mobile applications. There are many unique features of Bocoup that are worth sharing and that have been enabled by recent development and economic initiatives. As part of a long-term business strategy, and because of per foot costs that are significantly lower than downtown Boston, Bocoup chose to lease three times the amount of space they need to operate. They have dedicated the additional space to innovation and collaboration by creating individual workspaces that can be rented by one- or two-person software firms. These firms typically begin in someone’s apartment or garage, but after an initial success, there are not many locations they can grow into that are small enough or cheap enough to be practical.

However, in addition to a simply affordable workspace, proximity to other small developers and to Bocoup provides benefits for all parties as they collaborate on complex projects. Additionally, Bocoup uses the remaining space to host classes on the most recent developments in software language, developing a community that is tightly-knit, up to date on advances in the field, and made of individuals who understand that collaboration will result in success for all.

Next on our tour was lunch at Sportello, an Italian-styled and lively lunch & dinner spot at 348 Congress Street. The lunch hour seems to be very popular as we looked through their fresh sandwiches and home-made soups. After ordering the conveniently and custom prepared box lunch that included sandwiches, cookies, chips and a drink (not necessarily eaten in that order), we wandered back to the waterfront plaza next to Children’s Wharf Park. We enjoyed the sun and sat on the few open benches while children and their families played and order ice cream from the nearby stand.

Then we were on to Fablevision, a media & interactive development studio with a similarly non-traditional approach to business. Housed above the Boston Children’s Museum in what used to be a meat processing facility at the turn of the century and that was subsequently a high-end auto museum, Fablevision’s office is set up in an open floorplan and incorporates a sound-proof studio to test new products. Fablevision creates innovative and software-light interactive games that seek to teach a range of subjects from financial literacy to the values of engaged citizenship. A truly innovative approach to education, Fablevision cites their proximity to the many firms in Boston as a factor in their success, as well as productive partnerships with both the City of Boston and the State of Massachusetts.

Finally, aside from seeing a part of the city I hadn’t visited before, I could understand how efforts to attract many smaller firms and the lively and young families employed by them can have an effect on the feel and culture of a neighborhood. Originally from California, I’m in the process of deciding where I’d like to live after I complete my graduate degree in public policy. Aside from the very tangible things I’ll look for – like a job – I’ll also be looking for an environment that is diverse and vibrant, filled with young people who are willing to work hard but are also interested in spending a Sunday morning at a sidewalk café and enjoying the weather. I can say that Boston is in the running despite being somewhat questionable on the weather issue, which – after the Army – I’m pretty sure I can handle.