Kanata North Business Association unveils Hub350

Kanata North Business Association (KNBA), which represents Canada’s largest technology park, announced the state-of-the-art global technology centre Hub350. The facility will promote growth on a global scale by bringing together industry, academia and finance professionals in Kanata North to further support its member companies. 

Hub350 represents the creation of a physical community to support members and their employees, community partners and sponsors. KNBA president and executive director Jamie Petten said the centre will serve as the ‘gateway to Canada’s largest technology park.’

“This will be a gateway to growth, to finance, to talent, to success,” Petten said. “The Hub350 space will be the truest intersection of nature and technology – a trendy, natural atmosphere to attract world class talent and companies, while showcasing Kanata North as Canada’s destination to live, work, play and learn.”

Funding resources, research, and new talent

The centre will be supported by and connected to three pillars – private sector, finance and academia – in order to connect members of the technology park to a wide range of resources that will support their continued growth. Hub350 will better facilitate introductions for member companies to funding resources, research, and new talent.

“With support from Hub350, teams like ours will be able to set up more meetings with post secondary institutions, corporate partners and investors in the future. Having these resources available all in one collaborative and dynamic community work space at the heart of the technology park will be invaluable,” said Tracy King, VP Marketing at Martello Technologies. “It’s great to see that, in many ways, we will now have a town hall for the hundreds of tech companies located in Kanata.”

Hub350 is also set to be the physical home of Discover Technata – Canada’s largest aggregated tech job board. As part of the business association’s economic recovery plan to accelerate innovation through the pandemic, Discover Technata seeks to attract job seekers from around the world to Ottawa’s Kanata North. There are currently over 10,000+ open positions advertised on the Discover Technata Job Board, and 500+ roles available locally with member companies located in Kanata North Technology Park.

Brings together more than 500 companies

The platform’s job board brings together more than 500 companies with tens of thousands of job seekers, becoming a one-stop-shop for those seeking opportunities in an area that shows unprecedented growth and employment activity.

Said Vicki Coughey, Kanata North Business Association Chair, “We’re excited for the launch of Hub350, which will better support our member companies and will further the Ottawa region as one of the world’s leading tech capitals.”

The new hub furthers this aim for growth by serving as a foundation for the technology park’s special economic district designation, a concept developed and co-led by KNBA and City of Ottawa Long Term Planning, Economic Development teams in support of the national capital region’s new Official Plan. The City of Ottawa’s next Official Plan will support future development across the city and within the technology park over the next 25 years.

Successful partnership and a close integration

350 Legget is set to be the primary node within Canada’s largest tech park that will emerge as a mixed use innovation district activity centre with ecosystem partners collaborating in this shared space.

Recent commitments from the University of Ottawa and now Carleton University to establish Kanata North satellite campuses directly in the technology park have supported a successful partnership and a close integration of their post-secondary institutions with members. Their campuses are now offering talent, research and training directly to our members to accelerate the ability of our companies to innovate and flourish.

The 350 Legget location is home to the original Mitel Networks campus, which is steeped in the rich history of the tech park, and will be designed by Linebox studios, designers of the Shopify offices.

World’s primary 5G tech hub

“Linebox is very excited and proud to be working with KNBA on HUB350. The tech industry has always been a leader in the innovation of ‘the office’. It’s great to be working with partners who are forward-thinking, ambitious and open to new ideas about what the future of work should be,” said Andrew Reeves, Principal Partner and Founder at Linebox Studio.

Kanata North continues to position itself as the world’s primary 5G tech hub with exciting and disruptive businesses operating in clean tech, defense tech, software, and other tech verticals. The technology park is home to the city’s connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV) public test track, where Ottawa was the first Canadian city to launch testing of an on-street autonomous vehicle (AV) communicating with live city infrastructure.

The region, just 20 minutes from downtown Ottawa, is developing into a complete and connected innovation community, a living lab for a highly educated and tech-oriented workforce to gather to live, work, play and learn. Hub350 will be supported by a series of Canadian and multinational enterprise sponsors, which KNBA will announce in the coming weeks.