A downtown-based startup is moving its offices to the Cortex Innovation Community.
Meeting planning company Filament, founded in 2015, will occupy less space at Cortex, about 9,000 square feet, than the 20,000 square feet the company currently leases at the Ely Walker Lofts building at 1518 Washington Ave. The company originally operated out of 10,000 square feet on Washington Avenue, but signed a lease in late 2018 to double that space.
But the new location in Cortex’s 4220 building in the Central West End will allow Filament to more actively work with Cortex companies to improve meetings, officials said. The company designs, facilitates and hosts collaborative meetings, retreats and offsite meetings that help “smart people think together better,” according to a news release. In 2020, the company pivoted to assist companies that want to improve virtual meetings.
Filament will start holding meetings in the Cortex office as soon as August and has budgeted $200,000 for the design and build-out of the former Innovation Hall, an event venue once used for some gatherings by Venture Cafe.
Filament officials said in a statement, "We loved our space downtown — and will continue to manage it as a creative retreat venue for week-long, in-person off-sites for distributed teams — but had an opportunity to deliver our services along with new programming in the middle of St. Louis' innovation ecosystem."
Filament founder Matthew Homann said in a statement, “The opportunity to move to Cortex has been a dream of ours and allows us to better serve St. Louis’ innovation community by delivering our unique meetings and retreats as well as additional programming and services aimed at Cortex businesses and the St. Louis community at large."
That will come through training and innovation-focused events, along with Filament’s Thinksgiving initiative that pairs large companies with nonprofits for a day.
Since Cortex opened in 2002, the 200-acre technology hub has grown to a total economic impact of more than $2.1 billion across the St. Louis region, currently hosting more than 415 companies that employ 5,800 people.
Filament said those numbers “are expected to exponentially within the next ten years, and Filament is proud to be a part of that.”
Cortex CEO Sam Fiorello said, “As a driver of inclusive economic growth in our region, we believe that Filament’s presence will not only be valuable to the businesses and employees that call the Cortex Innovation Community home today but will also help us advance the ambitious goals set out in our five-year strategic plan for driving even greater equitable economic impact in our region going forward.”
Cortex’s development partner on the project is Wexford Science & Technology LLC.
“Coming out of the pandemic, we are all challenged to find new ways to work better and work differently. Filament provides us with programming to accomplish both,” said Travis Sheridan, Wexford’s senior vice president and chief community officer. “More importantly, we need to create opportunities to amplify new voices, surface new perspectives, and deliver new outcomes. I look forward to seeing the community respond to this new innovation offering.”
