Entrepreneurs and startup founders living in Greater Green Bay have a new co-working space to call home.
The Urban Hub, located in Green Bay’s Railyard Innovation District at 340 N. Broadway Suite 200, recently underwent a revamping to help centralize and cultivate the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The 10,000 square-foot space features an open concept design, sleek modern furniture, high-speed WiFi, meeting rooms, and private lounge areas to facilitate one-on-one conversations. It also boasts a European bakehouse, coffee shop and beer.
“Beyond the amenities, what we are really building is community,” Matthew Kee, development manager and a local tech entrepreneur, said by email. “I know that founders need a community of like-minded people. The Urban Hub is open to anybody, but we’re putting a stake in the ground in the high-growth and scalable startup market.”
The Urban Hub is an extension of the city’s Startup Hub business incubator program (located near the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College campus) and is managed by the Greater Green Bay Chamber of Commerce.
The facility was formerly known as T2 Accelerator, but the broad co-working space previously failed to gain traction with the public. After holding several meetings with local startups and entrepreneurs, the chamber took over management in 2019 and rebranded the underutilized space to guide the future growth of startup companies in the region.
“We wanted to redefine what we were trying to give the community and enhance downtown,” said Hub manager, Ron Franklin, by phone. “There were a lot of entrepreneurs who couldn’t or didn’t want to work from coffee shops anymore. Previously, there’s never been a convening body for tech businesses and startups in this area.”
Franklin says members of the Urban Hub will benefit from the organization’s various startup programming. In addition to having access to the organization’s “upbeat and urban” facility, its members will have the opportunity to hold “office hours” with investors to discuss business planning, marketing, key milestones, funding and other topics centered around business building.
“We’re really more than a co-working space,” says Franklin. “We’re really designing it for people to collaborate together. We want people to know we have the resources available to help them grow their business.”
So far, the Urban Hub has five startup founder members, two venture capitalists, a team of software developers, and a corporate accounting partner available to its members. Amid the recent coronavirus outbreak, the Urban Hub facility is closed, but its advisors are still holding virtual “office hours” for startups looking to get a leg up.
In the future, the Urban Hub hopes to expand programming to include collaboration breakfasts, Happy Hours, and pitch competitions to help attract and retain its members.
“This next phase is us establishing a beachhead in our target market and becoming a place where Green Bay startups collaborate, make strategic connections, and build the future,” Kee said. “Once we are successful creating density in Urban Hub with the existing startups we have in the area, then word of mouth will spread and we will organically grow from other sources.”
Nick Williams contributed to this report
