Generator Makerspace Plans Open House in New South End Facility

Generator Entry at Sears Lane

The new Generator makerspace will host an all-day open house on Wednesday, Jan. 18 at its new home at 40 Sears Lane in the South End Arts and Business district. The public is welcome to check out the new 8,500 square-foot space from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will be tours, member demonstrations, on-site registration for new members, and hot chocolate. 

Generator is a center of creativity with some 150 current members, 22 privately rented studios and seven specialty workshop areas focused on rapid prototyping, electronics, jewelry, woodworking, metal shop, and design. Generator is also a "sandbox" space for open collaboration and social connection-making around shared interests in technology and the arts, according to Executive Director Lars Hasselblad Torres.

During the open house, there will be demonstrations of robotics by studio member Christine Braun of Robots for Kids Too; drones and unmanned aerial vehicle technologies by Steve Mermelstein of VT Drone; custom-built miniaturized classic arcade games by studio member Jake Blend; laser engraving by jeweler and Generator staff member Annika Rundberg; and a robotic arm design lesson developed by middle school design tech instructors Eric Schoembs of Edmunds Middle School and Dan Treinis of Hunt Middle School.

Founded in March, 2014 with support from the City of Burlington, Champlain College, the University of Vermont and numerous institutional, corporate, and individual donors, Generator was originally located in the lower level of Memorial Auditorium and has become an important hub of creativity, learning and entrepreneurship in the city and Vermont, he said. 

Generator's move to the Sears Lane facility in the South End of Burlington signals a strengthened collaboration between Champlain College and the two-and-a-half-year-old makerspace. Generator's new location is a renovated portion of the College's Facility and Operations warehouse on Sears Lane. The site is opposite Champlain's Miller Center, which is home to the Emergent Media Center and the College's own MakerLab. For more information about Generator, membership, and programs, visit https://generatorvt.com/ or call 802-540-0761. 


Founded in 1878, Champlain College is a small, not-for-profit, private college in Burlington, Vermont, with additional campuses in Montreal, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain offers a traditional undergraduate experience from its beautiful campus overlooking Lake Champlain and over 90 residential undergraduate and online undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certificates. Champlain's distinctive career-driven approach to higher education embodies the notion that true learning occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. Champlain College is included in the Princeton Review's The Best 384 Colleges: 2019 Edition. For the fourth year in a row, Champlain was named a "Most Innovative School" in the North by U.S. News & World Report's 2019 "America's Best Colleges,” and a “Best Value School” and is ranked in the top 100 “Regional Universities of the North” and in the top 25 for “Best Undergraduate Teaching.” Champlain is also featured in the Fiske Guide to Colleges for 2019 as one of the "best and most interesting schools" in the United States, Canada and Great Britain and is a 2019 College of Distinction. For more information, visit champlain.edu.