> > http://www.knightarts.org/knight-arts-challengeQuestion 1: who approached > who to start the project?
Depends on how the story is told ;) There's been mutual desire between Geoff, myself, and the guys at Postgreen to work together since we met each other. We're strongly aligned, and knew we'd do something rad together. We approached them at the end of last year about the bigger, more aggressive project of developing an entire city block. The original pitch was for an arts and culture grant and looked like this: Indy Hall & Partners to Develop Next Generation Piazza > Over the last 4 years, Indy Hall – a creative coworking community center in > Old City Philadelphia – has proven itself with an extraordinary track record > for creating a collaborative clubhouse catering to creatives across dozens > of industries, including but not limited to designers, developers, writers, > artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, educators, small business owners, > telecommuters, marketers, videographers, game developers, and more. > We’ve shown growth over 3 years of operating shared space, from ~20 members > of an 1800 square foot space to over 100 members sharing nearly 5000 square > feet. > We believe that our next opportunity for growth is larger than a single > space, but instead, to re-invent an entire city block in Philadelphia as a > “Piazza” designed for independently minded creatives. > We will take our experience, and our community partners, and use it to seed > the creation of a new location that mixes not only industries, but the > entire strata of a creative lifestyle: live, work, and play. That proposal was for the Knight Arts Challenge - and while it won a position as finalist (eligible for an arts and culture grant from the Knight Foundation) we found it was a scale mismatch for the potential grant and a mismatch for our approach to planning and executing projects. Hardest "no" I've had to give in a long time, for sure. It was, however, a rallying point for us to meet with Postgreen Homes about the idea and identify shared interest in this particular direction and idea. We decided that the concept as proposed as too large for the moment, and in the interest of "eating an elephant" we should look for smaller, more achievable steps that took us closer to the goal. About 6 weeks, later, they approached us with plans for the "KO", a new design they came up with for a 6 unit urban cohousing project. It was that proposal that became the prompt for the project we're currently executing on. So technically...we both approached each other. :) > Question 2: why do you rock so hard? It's an occupational hazard. /ah indyhall.org coworking in philadelphia On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Angel Kwiatkowski <[email protected]>wrote: > Question 1: who approached who to start the project? > Question 2: why do you rock so hard? > > Angel > > On May 10, 12:10 pm, Alex Hillman <[email protected]> > wrote: > > There's a good chance that you've heard me say (read: rant) something > like > > "coworking isn't about the desks". > > > > Well, Indy Hall is working on a new project to really emphasize that > we're > > thinking far beyond the desks, with an urban cohousing project that is > the > > first step towards an entire Indy Hall-concepted Urban Village. > > > > http://village.indyhall.org > > > > I'm sure Raines is going to be excited to hear about our endeavors in > > cohousing. He's about to become one of our trusted advisors, even though > he > > doesn't know it yet ;) > > > > To be clear - we're not building a live-work space. We're taking the best > > lessons we've learned in making our version of the best place to work and > > applying them to making our version of the best place to live. > > > > It's exciting, insane, and awesome to be learning so much so quickly > again. > > Our development partners,http://postgreenhomes.com, have done some > > incredible work in the sustainable urban home industry and making > > Philadelphia a shining example, so you can imagine we're pumped to > finally > > be working together. > > > > You can also check out some of the press we've garnered in the last week > > since the announcement - we've had inquiries for stories from bigger news > > outlets but we've decided to hold them off until we've got something > bigger > > to show off. > > > > > http://technicallyphilly.com/2011/04/26/indy-hall-and-postgreen-were-...http://www.flyingkitemedia.com/devnews/cohousing0510.aspx > > > > I'm particularly excited to be applying the lessons learned in building > Indy > > Hall to another related endeavor, one that I expect will provide lessons > we > > can apply back to the workspace as well. > > > > We've been fielding questions for the last couple of weeks since we > > announced the project so if anyone has them here, I'm happy to answer > them > > as well. > > > > -Alex > > > > /ah > > indyhall.org > > coworking in philadelphia > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. 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