new economy

VengaWorks to Manage Downtown Meridian Office Space

By Sharon Fisher, 10-08-09

Let’s say you’re a worker, either on your own or for an employer, who finds themselves bopping all over the Treasure Valley on a daily basis. Maybe you’re a real estate agent, a developer, a startup, a mortgage broker, a public relations person, a legislator, a lobbyist.

Maybe, even, a writer.

Anyway, you find yourself setting up shop in coffeehouses, libraries, maybe even in parking lots from your car, in-between traveling and your various meetings. You know by heart which restaurants offer free wifi, where you can plug in your laptop for a while, and just how long you can hang out in a coffee place before they start getting testy at you.

Meanwhile, you’re trying to work, hoping nobody spills their double-shot white chocolate mocha on you, and attempting to conduct business over the cell phone squished into your shoulder over the noise in the room without contributing too much to it yourself.

This is where VengaWorks wants to come in.

VengaWorks and the Meridian Development Corp. (MDC), which is Meridian’s urban renewal agency, announced this week that VengaWorks was being hired as the property management firm for what the companies are calling The Ground Floor, a 3000-square-foot space just off the main drag in downtown Meridian in a 1913 building. It’s all part of the effort of Meridian—now Idaho’s third-largest city, and no longer under the shadow of its abandoned creamery smokestack—to also attract the creative class and say that, by gosh, they’re cool too.

However, instead of carving the space up into offices and parceling it out in multi-year leases, VengaWorks operates using the concept of ”office hoteling,” where people come in and use a space as needed, for a flat fee per month. They also get access to the Internet, a phone system (with the same number) over the Internet, and facilities such as conference rooms.  The MDC space consists of two conference rooms and 12 workstations.

“What’s broken about commercial real estate is that its utilization is inefficient,” said Mark Gilbreath, VengaWorks CEO.  Myriad studies point out that after people are assigned to cubicles and offices, only 35 to 40 percent of the office space is utilized at any one time, due to meetings, absences, appointments, and travel. At the same time, office space is the second-largest expense for a business, after its people. In addition, 62.5 percent of the electricity used in the U.S. is through office buildings, he said, quoting the U.S. Green Building council. “There is an enormous opportunity to find new space utilization models.”

VengaWorks currently has space in three areas: in Meridian on Overland Road, just off the freeway; in Caldwell, near the 20/26 exit, and in downtown Star. The MDC space provides another opportunity for people who want to be closer to downtown Meridian, including its restaurants and City Hall, Gilbreath said. The Overland Road space is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certified, and while the MDC space isn’t expected to receive LEED certification, it has sustainable features such as natural light and care taken with aspects such as fixtures and finishes, he said.

For as little as $199 per month, people get access to each of those spaces, working in each one as the need strikes them.  (The Overland Road location does offer more traditional fixed-space leases as well, for $399 a month.) Meanwhile, VengaWorks and the MDC basically oversell the space, counting on the fact that—like athletic clubs in January—far more people can sign up for the service than will ever use it at one time. MDC, for example, was thinking in terms of making $4,000 a month on the space at capacity; through the VengaWorks setup, it stands to bring in up to $9,000. (There is also the possibility of renting out space to artists for $100 a month.)

There are downsides, aside from the fact that workers can’t leave their coffee mugs and family pictures on the desk. If companies aren’t tied to a multi-year lease, at the same time they also can’t count on physical resources such as conference rooms or even desks to be available when they need them—that doesn’t appear to be a problem thus far, though Gilbreath wouldn’t say how many VengaWorks members there are—and the monthly fee can change, well, monthly.

While it’s similar to incubator spaces such as Boise State University’s Technology and Entrepreneurial Center in Nampa and Mark River’s WaterCooler in Boise—and Gilbreath would love to find a way to work together—it is different. Though many VengaWorks members are in the technology industry—and TechConnect, which helps technology companies get off the ground, has space in VengaWorks itself—it’s not necessarily tied to any one industry. “They’re focused on tech startups, we’re focused on supporting business,” Gilbreath said.

What isn’t clear now is how successful it will be. According to organization minutes, MDC leased the space from the building owners for two years with an early buyout provision that would allow them to terminate the lease. MDC’s primary goal, Gilbreath said, is to stimulate business in downtown Meridian. And though it’s unknown how many members are there of the creative class who need an office in Meridian, Gilbreath said leases in the Overland Road location are steadily increasing over the past 11 months.

The space is scheduled to open November 16.

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