NewHavenBIZ

20 n e w h a v e n B I Z | N o v e m b e r / D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 8 n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m a handful of members in a tiny Or- ange Street storefront and growing the business to 175 members in its current 14,000-square-foot space at 760 Chapel St. (In September, Ballard sold the Grove to the owners of Elm City Games, a local game-playing com- pany, who have renamed it Agora and plan to shi its focus to the arts and social justice, co-owner Matt Fantastic said.) DeskCrashers at 129 Church St., run by local real estate devel- opment firm Mod Equities, has a modern feel, while Regus, one of the nation's largest coworking landlords, offers a more corporate setting on the 19th floor of the Connecticut Financial Center at 157 Church St. e Urban Collective at 85 Willow St. bills itself as the city's first black-owned collaborative space, joining niche spaces like Health Haven Hub for health care entre- preneurs, Hub55 for Brazilian firms, S*Park Innovation for bioscience, and the arts-focused NXTHVN, which is under construction in the Dixwell neighborhood. Meanwhile, MakeHaven, which unveiled a new 5,000-square-foot workshop on Chapel Street in Au- gust, and the Tinker Lab, which just opened inside the New Haven Free Public Library's new Innovation Commons, give hands-on types access to high-tech equipment like 3D printers, laser cutters and CNC milling machines. Shifting Into Drive One of the newest players, District New Haven, has a hip, industrial vibe, with exposed brick walls and metal truss work, a nod to the tech campus' former days as a CTtransit bus depot. Its nucleus is Drive, an 18,000-square-foot coworking space. On a recent Monday, employees of a New Haven tech firm and the local director of a San Francisco-based coding school mingled over lunch in the communal kitchen. Others, with earbuds in place, worked silently on laptops in partial- ly enclosed, restaurant-style booths at the perimeter of the shared, open space, dubbed "downtown." Coworkers pay $30 a day or $300 a month for a floating desk or $400 a month for a dedicated desk. Private offices, accommodating from one to nine people, start at $500 a month. Since its April opening, about 40 companies have joined the co- working space, which is 70 percent full, according to District Commu- nity Director and COO JoHanna Hamilton. "I have to change the availability COWORKING District New Haven Community Director and COO JoHanna Hamilton in her office at 470 James Street. Continued from previous page

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