
Bellingham, Washington gets a new makerspace: The Foundry - frankcohen
http://www.bellinghamfoundry.com
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sparkman55
If you visit Bellingham, you'd do well to visit one of the best brewpubs on
the West Coast: Boundary Bay Brewery, home to award-winning IPAs (often
available from the cask) and a surprisingly-solid menu.

With a university and proximity to Seattle and Vancouver, I'm not too
surprised to see a nascent techie scene. A little stimulus would be good for
the local economy, which has been quite depressed.

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RandallBrown
And one of Seattle's maker spaces, Makerhaus, is about to close down.

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omegant
What are the economics of a makerspace? are they business, no profit or clubs?

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rtkwe
Clubs mostly, generally the vast majority of Makerspaces' income is solely the
membership dues. There are a handful that are run more like businesses.
Techshop is one and there's non profits like The Geek Group up in Michigan
which has full time employees and a goal of each department/lab paying for
it's own existence. Probably more but those are the ones I know of.

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jedanbik
Bellingham has been the base camp for Mt Baker and Ski-to-Sea for years now -
pick a season of the year, and you're apt to see adventurers from Seattle and
Vancouver grabbing snacks, equipment, and beer before/after heading into the
wild.

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saidajigumi
That does look great. Makes me all the sadder that Seattle just lost
Makerhaus. Hands-on access to a laser cutter has been incredibly useful for
some of my projects and prototyping.

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patja
Makerhaus was a good example of how _not_ to do one of these ventures. Priced
out hobbyists, and reportedly not very well run. Lots of glitz and glam
without a sound business plan or market analysis. See comments:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/2e0tv4/makerhaus_in...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/2e0tv4/makerhaus_in_fremont_is_closing/)

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benplant
Looks like a great space and selection of tools. Going to check out the open
house this Saturday! 5pm to 10pm for anyone else that's interested and in the
area.

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morenoh149
Bellingham seems up and coming. I was there earlier this year my gf was
helping open the new H&M at the mall there. Very religious town from what I
could tell.

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ovulator
I live here. The city of Bellingham is very much not religious, they are
mostly left leaning hippies, maybe “spiritual” in the hippy sense, but not
religious in the Christian sense. The surrounding county on the other hand is
much more religious.

Oddly enough, our only real tech company in town, is one of the world’s
largest creator of Bible software:
[https://www.logos.com/](https://www.logos.com/)

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rattray
When I visited Bellingham (Bham) recently, one of my first thoughts was "man,
this is a place I could come hack for a while!"

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netshade
This. I randomly picked Bellingham as a quiet place to go to for a week and do
some self-teaching plus vacationing.

Decent food, friendly people, nice coffee shops, great areas to go trail
running in. I'm not sure I'd go there for an actual vacation, but for just
getting away and trying to learn some new things, it was a great place.

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jedanbik
There's a reason they call it "the city of subdued excitement."

