On the last day of 2018, we wanted to take a minute to reflect on some of our favorite pieces, headlines and Cincy ecosystem hotspots with another “End of Year” series.
First up? A roundup of this year’s Office Envy pieces.
For the unfamiliar, these Office Envy articles take a look inside some of Cincy’s coolest working environments, and talk with the people that make them so special.
Let’s take a look at some below.
The Space
Claire Krawsczyn is no stranger to the entrepreneurial world.
In fact, she’s owned her own business for nearly five years, a marketing and communication company. However, she and her friend Rachel Murphy felt that their landscape in suburban Cincinnati was missing something for entrepreneurs like themselves.
So they created The Space, a local community workplace where professionals on the fringes of the city could congregate and work.
Krawsczyn remembers distinctly when she realized The Space was necessary.
“My daughter was home and I was in the home office trying to have a client call, and my daughter was knocking,” she said. “I had to shut the door, kind of in her face. I felt awful, but I was totally distracted, and knew it wasn’t going to work anymore.”
While Krawsczyn knew there was a considerable amount of activity in the Cincinnati coworking world, it felt unaccessible to her.
“There are a lot of amazing spaces in Cincinnati, downtown,” she said. “I don’t live or work downtown, very few of my clients are downtown; my house is down in the ‘burbs, and I wanted to have space close by.”
It also didn’t help that a lot of the area coworking places she encountered were, as she described, “more buttoned up, sterile,” with a lonely, corporate office feel.
Krawsczyn and Murphy wanted to fix that.
“It’s an effort to [give] entrepreneurs and small business owners just like ourselves … a space to work, or have space to connect with small businesses owners via networking events,” she said. “We just needed a good space that was warm and inviting and professional, and we decided to do it ourselves.”
The Space officially opened in December 2017, and Krawsczyn and Murphy continue to congruently run both their own businesses and the coworking organization.
Read more here.
Fueled Collective
Fueled Collective Cincinnati wants to be known as more than a coworking spot: It’s a social space, too, keen on having users lean into its lifestyle branding as an “urban country club.”
It’s the product of the rebranded Coco coworking chain that has locations in New York City and Minneapolis, but its Cincinnati location, considered a prototype for the brand, is just over seven months old.
“We’ve known that there was a missing space,” Jordin Cooper, vice president of brand strategy at St. Gregory Development Group, told Cincy Inno. The city didn’t have a WeWork hub or a SoHo Club, and that was a problem for both local and visiting professionals.
“We being business travelers ourselves, asked, ‘is there somewhere we can go to work that isn’t busy and loud?'” Cooper continued. “Our main goal with this space was to make sure there were offices, meeting rooms, [places members] could be social and work.”
While Fueled Collective certainly has those resources, with desks, conferences rooms, a library and business resources aplenty, it also boasts a full-service bar, a fitness space for pilates, barre, yoga and other classes, and a complete gym.
“[Members] are awe-inspired by their environment,” Cooper said. “It’s so different from what Cincinnati has ever seen.”
So far, Fueled has sold out its rear desk space and is nearing 250 members, which range from one-off freelancers to teams from companies like Heineken and Pandora.
“We’re definitely going to keep growing,” Cooper added, pointing to Fueled Collective’s robust events calendar as a way to do just that.
Read the full story here.
Gather
For Meg Cooper, the Cincy entrepreneurial landscape was missing something: A place for working parents to bring their kids as they got things done.
With her mother and business partner Peggy Bustamante, Cooper set out to change that. The result? Gather Cincy, a coworking spot that has all the amenities of a typical coworking location with a unique twist: childcare for kiddos aged 3 months to school aged.
While Gather Cincy serves a practical need, it also serves a more intangible one through the community it fosters, one that allows working parents and other members to “feel supported and understood,” Cooper said.
The journey to create Gather Cincy began with research, and lots of it. Cooper surveyed people within her immediate network to see what they wanted out of a new coworking space, and to gauge whether or not one was even necessary.”
She found that she wasn’t alone in her wish for a more kid-friendly coworking location.
“Feedback was overwhelming,” Cooper said. “People were asking, ‘Why hasn’t this existed before?'”
Read more here.
The Living Room
Does your home have an indoor slide?
Probably not. But the Living Room, a triple-threat creative meeting space on Norwood Ave., sure does.
It’s perhaps a symbol of what the Living Room aims to do: blend unique design with resources for professionals to do their best work.
“If you come into our space, it’s homey, but has a mix of industrial chic design, with exposed brick,” Marketing Manager Liz Haselmayer said. “But there are thousands of pillows, and you should feel comfortable enough to take a nap on any one of our couches.”
Don’t let its coziness fool you; the space is more than 10,000 square feet spread over two Victorian buildings, and with a full-service kitchen, it’s conducive for all kinds of events. In fact, the space’s aesthetic and resources have attracted clients for everything from weddings and rehearsal dinners to happy hours and classes.
“There are a lot of cool [coworking] places in Cincy,” Haselmayer said. “[But] we’re the largest creative space.”
In said creative space, corporate clients and their employees come in for strategic meetings, team building activities and other outings that necessitate a place to get work done that isn’t in a buttoned-up office. The Living Room supplies projectors, TVs, an endless supply of LaCroix and catering from its in-house chef.
Read more here.
