Kansas City's newest coworking concept is tailored toward businesses its founder calls a perpetual elephant in the room — small and growing contractors.
William Hayes got a firsthand look at the barriers to entry those firms face last year while scouting warehouse space for his ReuseHomes LLC, which develops and rehabilitates single-family homes in urban neighborhoods. At hundreds of thousands, if not 1 million-plus square feet, he found that typical warehouses were not optimal fits for smaller firms, from size to price.
Concurrently, Hayes said he canvassed contractor friends and found that despite different areas of focus, each invariably split their work between a home office and their truck.
"I started thinking, there's no such thing as a medium-sized construction company," said Hayes, previously an executive with Gold Crown Properties during its East 9 at Pickwick Plaza mixed-use redevelopment. "If you really look at it, you've got one or two owners with three to eight guys that work for them, doing $1 million to $3 million (in work) a year ... and then there's a big gap until you hit the big guys."
Enter Trades CoWork, a new business designed to harness the coworking space model most often associated with tech startups and similar small office users, and flip it to instead focus on construction and trades.
Hayes said he has spent the past several months remodeling an initial home for Trades CoWork, in an industrial building that formerly housed an artist's studio at 1701 Troost Ave. He also plans four other locations at different corners of Kansas City and aspires to an eventual national launch.
Trades CoWork offers about 6,000 square feet for contractor offices and 6,000 square feet for interior tool storage space, including 16 custom lockers. Outside is a 12,000-square-foot storage area, with 13 storage containers and trailer parking.
Contractor occupants aren't left to their own devices, either. Beyond space itself, Trades CoWork also provides a number of support services. The business has accounts with suppliers such as The Home Depot and Sherwin-Williams, allowing it to acquire materials at scale and pass the savings on to members.
It also assists with branding items, such as professional website and business card creation, and administrative matters, such as accounting, bookkeeping and payroll management.
"I know from experience how hard it is to constantly swim upstream and not have any support," Hayes said. "We're actually building out a very affordable way where the right hand knows what the left hand is doing, they're always in compliance and save a ton of money."
In the meantime, Hayes said, the small businesses can focus on pursuing and completing work, perhaps even as subcontractors on one another's projects.
"What we're building here is a network where you can learn from other trades, then partner up to go work on jobs together," he said.
Trades CoWork's website lists six membership packages, ranging from $199 to $1,300 a month, on top of additional storage offerings.
