Just over one year after opening its doors, Northeast Minneapolis' sports tech hub The Pitch will suspend the co-working aspect of its operations starting in 2018, SportsEngine co-founder Carson Kipfer told Minne Inno.
Kipfer said that many of the initial startups that started out at The Pitch have since moved on to larger spaces. SportsEngine's offices are next door to The Pitch, and over the last year, the company's space needs have increased, Kipfer said.
The Pitch launched in July 2016, billing itself as the sole sports-focused co-working space in the country. Backed by SportsEngine and other local investors, The Pitch was established around five months after SportsEngine was acquired by NBC Sports.
Although The Pitch will no longer operate as a co-working space, Kipfer said that it will "Continue to live on with a renewed commitment to hosting sports tech-based events, mentor network access and member community promotion."
The Pitch is discontinuing its co-working at a time when the Twin Cities co-working scene is becoming increasingly crowded. Currently, there are around 20 co-working spaces in the Twin Cities area. In Minneapolis, more than 640,000 square feet of office space is used for shared workspace, according to CBRE.
International co-working giant WeWork opened its first Minnesota location last month. The space occupies three floors of the Capella Tower, and at 50,000 square feet, it's the largest in downtown Minneapolis. New York-based Industrious opened its second Minneapolis office in the North Loop's trendy T3 building. This week, German co-working business Spaces announced that it will open its first Minnesota office in the North Loop.
The Twin Cities' hometown co-working company COCO is also growing. This summer, COCO doubled the size of its downtown location in the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. The location now takes up a full city block.
Read Minne Inno's profile about The Pitch's launch here.
