MANCHESTER, NH – Yes, the Cats came back, they just couldn’t stay away. Back in 2019, Liz Hitchcock and the team from Orbit Group, worked with the City of Manchester to meet code and add an artsy twist to the pedestrian crosswalk just outside The Bookery. It didn’t wear well but entrepreneurs aren’t fazed by minor setbacks. Lessons learned – warm days, reformulation of a product with a three-year warranty and the Cats came back – by way of a “catwalk” street crossing – yesterday to Elm Street.
Some might wonder why the attention and why the Discover Manchester sign powered by InkLink news feeds are important. This city is changing. The pandemic has shown us just how much technology makes a difference in keeping a community connected and moving forward. Smart cities are the future and Manchester is poised to benefit from the businesses that have become more visibly present in our community.
I came across these two gentlemen taking photos of each other by the sign, by the cat-walkway paint job in progress. Father and son team, both named John Byrnes. They had a deeply personal interest in the sign because their son/grandson, Colin McKenney, is on the electrical engineering team at Soofa, the source of this new product. The elder Mr. Byrnes, whose family roots hail from County Wicklow, Ireland, lives in Keene, and joined up with his son, who came down from Vermont for a previously scheduled business call in Manchester. While they were engaged with the signage, other folks nearby took note and began to check it all out.
This is how things start to steamroll and gain traction. For the Byrnes family, yesterday in Manchester, was the cat’s meow.
