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 :) 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. -- 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.
