Looking for a coworking space that has a large "anchor tenant"

Does anyone know of an example of a coworking space that devotes around 20%-30% of their square footage to 1 large business? Spaces over 10,000 ft2 are even more helpful!

Angel of Cohere

We do at The Profile in Vancouver. What info were you looking for?

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On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 10:39 AM -0800, “Angel Kwiatkowski” [email protected] wrote:

Does anyone know of an example of a coworking space that devotes around 20%-30% of their square footage to 1 large business? Spaces over 10,000 ft2 are even more helpful!

Angel of Cohere

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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Hi Kevin!

I’m working on some different mixes of coworking/private office/anchor tenant floorplans for a client. Their space has 15,000 ft2 of usable space and I am just trying to find an example of a coworking space that has the anchor tenant model. What % does the anchor tenant occupy in your space? Any pros or cons that you’ve seen?

Angel

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On Tuesday, January 5, 2016 at 12:15:20 PM UTC-7, Kevin Penstock wrote:

We do at The Profile in Vancouver. What info were you looking for?

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On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 10:39 AM -0800, “Angel Kwiatkowski” [email protected] wrote:

Does anyone know of an example of a coworking space that devotes around 20%-30% of their square footage to 1 large business? Spaces over 10,000 ft2 are even more helpful!

Angel of Cohere

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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Hi Angel!

We used to do this at Foundery as we were growing in the early days.

We have about 15,000 sq ft and about 5,000 sq ft was occupied by one anchor tenant / company.

It was great in the sense that they were our first members and they grew over time.

It was lovely to have the stable income as we were renovating and expanding within The Foundery Buildings.

We were also really proud when they eventually moved out into their own work space.

However there were some side effects as well.

As we’ve discussed before, a group that large (they grew from 2 to 32 members) can easily dominate the culture in a space.

This wasn’t always a negative thing (they were awesome members) but it lead to a sort of division among the members.

For many of the solo members, a team that size can feel intimidating, imposing or exclusive even when the team has the best of intentions.

Our building allows for the culture to be different on each of our three floors, so this impact was temporarily managed this way.

It might have had a more profound impact with an open layout.

I would also advise against letting teams or tenants grow to that percentage of membership because it was a little tricky to find 32 (AMAZING) new members all at the same time.

Since this experience, we have worked with a few other growing teams but we keep the size down (max 10) and we don’t allow one company to occupy more than about 500 sq feet.

When it comes to coworking, this balance is much better for all of us.

Anchor tenants are amazing in other scenarios (A cafe, gallery etc) and can also be utilized well in a co-location model, but I believe true coworking relies on the equality of members in the community.

Hope that helps!

Reach me off list if you have any other questions :slight_smile:

Ashley

Foundery
www.foundery.is

Creative Blueprint

www.creativeblueprint.ca

The Foundery Buildings
376 Bathurst Street
Toronto, ON
M5T 2S6

···

On Jan 5, 2016, at 1:38 PM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

Does anyone know of an example of a coworking space that devotes around 20%-30% of their square footage to 1 large business? Spaces over 10,000 ft2 are even more helpful!

Angel of Cohere

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

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Thanks Ashley!!!

···

On Tuesday, January 5, 2016 at 1:32:55 PM UTC-7, ashley wrote:

Hi Angel!

We used to do this at Foundery as we were growing in the early days.

We have about 15,000 sq ft and about 5,000 sq ft was occupied by one anchor tenant / company.

It was great in the sense that they were our first members and they grew over time.

It was lovely to have the stable income as we were renovating and expanding within The Foundery Buildings.

We were also really proud when they eventually moved out into their own work space.

However there were some side effects as well.

As we’ve discussed before, a group that large (they grew from 2 to 32 members) can easily dominate the culture in a space.

This wasn’t always a negative thing (they were awesome members) but it lead to a sort of division among the members.

For many of the solo members, a team that size can feel intimidating, imposing or exclusive even when the team has the best of intentions.

Our building allows for the culture to be different on each of our three floors, so this impact was temporarily managed this way.

It might have had a more profound impact with an open layout.

I would also advise against letting teams or tenants grow to that percentage of membership because it was a little tricky to find 32 (AMAZING) new members all at the same time.

Since this experience, we have worked with a few other growing teams but we keep the size down (max 10) and we don’t allow one company to occupy more than about 500 sq feet.

When it comes to coworking, this balance is much better for all of us.

Anchor tenants are amazing in other scenarios (A cafe, gallery etc) and can also be utilized well in a co-location model, but I believe true coworking relies on the equality of members in the community.

Hope that helps!

Reach me off list if you have any other questions :slight_smile:

Ashley

Foundery
www.foundery.is

Creative Blueprint

www.creativeblueprint.ca

The Foundery Buildings
376 Bathurst Street
Toronto, ON
M5T 2S6

On Jan 5, 2016, at 1:38 PM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

Does anyone know of an example of a coworking space that devotes around 20%-30% of their square footage to 1 large business? Spaces over 10,000 ft2 are even more helpful!

Angel of Cohere

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Not exactly the same, but we had a small team whose growth was reasonably well timed with one of our expansions.

Our experience echo’s Ashley’s in almost every way. Even when it was good, it was a struggle in a lot of other ways that took away from what we were there to do for the majority of our members.

I think they got to ~23 people before they moved out, but even in doing that we only survived the transition it because we were able to “ease” them out by slowly reducing their memberships from full time to the lighter usage memberships, bit by bit. This put a lot of stress on their team though, enough that I wouldn’t knowingly do it again but the alternative also would’ve broken us.

And I say all of this loving the people, too. And many of them loved Indy Hall, and were sad to go. But they viewed it differently because they came for something different - they came mostly for their own team members, and less for the other members. That sends mixed signals to the rest of our members, who heard us say “the #1 reason to come here is the other people.”

The closest thing we had to “success” was in breaking large teams up, which is counterintuitive but has proven very valuable…just nearly impossible to systematically encourage.

Teams have different needs than individuals, and trying to force them into the same box creates disproportionately more work that takes you away from the REAL work. We’re constantly experimenting, and even with continuous improvement the costs continue to outweighs the benefits.

Teams seem like a great shortcut to revenue, but I won’t ever take it again.

-Alex

···

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 4:18 PM, Angel Kwiatkowski [email protected] wrote:

Thanks Ashley!!!

On Tuesday, January 5, 2016 at 1:32:55 PM UTC-7, ashley wrote:

Hi Angel!

We used to do this at Foundery as we were growing in the early days.

We have about 15,000 sq ft and about 5,000 sq ft was occupied by one anchor tenant / company.

It was great in the sense that they were our first members and they grew over time.

It was lovely to have the stable income as we were renovating and expanding within The Foundery Buildings.

We were also really proud when they eventually moved out into their own work space.

However there were some side effects as well.

As we’ve discussed before, a group that large (they grew from 2 to 32 members) can easily dominate the culture in a space.

This wasn’t always a negative thing (they were awesome members) but it lead to a sort of division among the members.

For many of the solo members, a team that size can feel intimidating, imposing or exclusive even when the team has the best of intentions.

Our building allows for the culture to be different on each of our three floors, so this impact was temporarily managed this way.

It might have had a more profound impact with an open layout.

I would also advise against letting teams or tenants grow to that percentage of membership because it was a little tricky to find 32 (AMAZING) new members all at the same time.

Since this experience, we have worked with a few other growing teams but we keep the size down (max 10) and we don’t allow one company to occupy more than about 500 sq feet.

When it comes to coworking, this balance is much better for all of us.

Anchor tenants are amazing in other scenarios (A cafe, gallery etc) and can also be utilized well in a co-location model, but I believe true coworking relies on the equality of members in the community.

Hope that helps!

Reach me off list if you have any other questions :slight_smile:

Ashley

Foundery
www.foundery.is

Creative Blueprint

www.creativeblueprint.ca

The Foundery Buildings
376 Bathurst Street
Toronto, ON
M5T 2S6

On Jan 5, 2016, at 1:38 PM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

Does anyone know of an example of a coworking space that devotes around 20%-30% of their square footage to 1 large business? Spaces over 10,000 ft2 are even more helpful!

Angel of Cohere

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].

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Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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