February 24, 2017- UTEC mattress recycling program services picks up, deconstructs and recycles mattresses from across northern New England. UTEC makes most of its money on the fees it charges for picking up old mattresses from hotels, towns and colleges, but its business model isn’t about saving matresses from landfills and incinerators. It’s about recycling the lives of young gang members and inmates who work there. UTEC has a commercial kitchen cafe, and a woodworking factory where young workers turn out cutting boards for Whole Foods. But everyone starts out in mattresses. With team work UTEC is able to tear through 25,000 mattresses a year. It’s estimated there are 30 youth gangs in Lowell area, with 1,500 members. UTEC sends out teams of gang-savvy street workers into jails to do outreach and encourage those with criminal records and troubled histories to join the social, educational and employment programs UTEC offers. To read more on UTEC’s mattress recycling program Click Here.

February 08, 2017- Affirmative Investments is helping Horizons for Homeless Children and Watermark Development secure and structure financing for a new seven-story building for social service agencies. The new construction 135,000 square feet build is slated for construction on Colombus Ave on the Roxbury/ Jamaica Plain line.

January 12, 2017- The UTEC Community Kitchen is the latest expansion of its food services social enterprise on Warren Street. The new 5,000-square-foot commercial-grade kitchen includes seperate work lines and equipment for food manufacturing. The kitchen will be available to rental users, so Lowell’s food entrepreneurs won’t have to travel outside the city for food-production space. Its design is intended for multiple users so that UTEC operations and other food businesses can share the space. Three groups will be able to work simultaneously in the kitchen, which has a versatile space with large ovens, fryers, mixers, processors, packing, and labeling equipmen, refrigerator and freezer space, dry storage space and more. Renovating the space and creating the kitchen was a $750,000 project funded mostly by grants and donations. To read more on UTEC’s Commuinity Kitchen Click Here.