Monday, January 13, 2014
A visit to Fellow, Spokane's new coworking space
In this week’s Ideas Issue, we wrote about Fellow, the new coworking space started by Luke Baumgarten — former Inlander staffer, Terrain co-founder, RiverLit writer-in-residence, etc. — on South Howard Street in downtown Spokane. The idea is taking the desk-for-rent coworking model further by encouraging more collaboration. Get enough creative types in one place and everyone’s work will benefit.
I visited Fellow one afternoon back in mid-December, when the shared desks had just been built. It’s not huge, but it feels spacious — along with the main work room, there’s a smaller office space, a meeting room and a kitchen nook.
The idea for Fellow came out of discussions about the future of Terrain, and the location itself was matter of serendipity: Baumgarten had been talking to Josh Hissong right when his design firm, HDG, was planning to move into new digs on W. First Avenue. Fellow moved into the space they left behind on the fourth floor of 107 S. Howard. (You can see the new HDG headquarters out the window at Fellow.)
“I feel like designed space is important,” Baumgarten says. “It’s just better and more effective to work to work in a beautiful, calming space that makes you feel good.”
Baumgarten wrote a vision statement and ran it by the group, and now that’s what he directs people to when they ask what Fellow is about:
Fellow is a coworking space, but it’s more than that.
It is a community of people and organizations with varied skill sets and shared values who work independently and collaboratively to create great work that does real good.
We believe that beauty, justice, and innovation are values that go hand-in-hand. And we are not alone.
Read more about it or sign up here. Follow Fellow on Twitter for updates.
Tags: Fellow , coworking , Culture , Arts & Culture , Image
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Lisa Waananen
