Morristown has a half-a-dozen or more co-working locations, not counting the coffee shops where certain news editors work. Parsippany has three (at least). Rockaway has one. There will be one in Short Hills soon.
Now, downtown Chatham has entered the fold. The Station had its grand opening Tuesday. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-11th Dist.) provided remarks along with one of the building’s owners, Jeff Garibaldi of the Garibaldi Group.
Sherrill is a big supporter of the innovation economy and the Morris County initiative Startup Moveup Morris.
It’s a program that focuses on small businesses and helps promote co-working spaces, incubators and accelerator projects in municipalities across the county.
Sherrill told the audience that she has instructed her county-based staff to assist Startup Moveup any way it can.
“The suburbs are an incredibly exciting place to be. Silicon Valley was/is a suburb,” Sherrill said.
“What we need is a way to attract our youth to come back after their college education.”
She shared an anecdote about a discussion she had with a representative from a state with a poor education system.
“Perhaps we don’t need to improve our education,” said the other Congresswoman. “We’ll just hire your graduates.”
“You’re already doing it,” Sherrill deadpanned.
Also on hand Tuesday to welcome the business: Mayor Bruce Harris of Chatham Borough, Committeeman Thad Kobylarz, and Meghan Hunscher of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce.
The Station is the first application of the Startup Moveup Morris brand, but it won’t be the last. Other innovation hubs are anticipated in Boonton, Denville and Rockaway, with shared programming and reciprocal agreements likely.
Recognizing the informal public-private partnership aspect of The Station, Sherrill said it would be the “best government building ever!”
Like the collaborative nature of co-working spaces themselves, most owners/managers welcome other co-working businesses. Each one has its own characteristics, charms and creative vibe.
For example, The Station’s owners intend for it to be a place for companies on a growth trajectory rather than solo-preneurs.
The Station will have quiet background music. To make the point, a three-piece jazz band was playing at 10:30 in the morning.
Desks will be rented through Boxcar for a day, a week, a month, as needed. Not coincidentally, Boxcar has moved its headquarters to The Station and is encouraging employees to travel by scooter.
Boxcar’s business is growing. To reserve and pay for a space at the Madison train station one must use the Boxcar app.
The Garibaldi Group is best known for brokering leases for the Bell Labs’ Holmdel facility into the innovation space Bell Works, a 2.2-million-square-foot redevelopment dubbed a “metroburg” by its owner, Ralph Zucker.
This echo’s Sherrill’s sentiment about opportunities in suburbs like Morris County.
Startup Moveup Morris aims to make Morris County the sort of metroburg that convinces its young people to return, or stay.
MorristownGreen.com contributor Beth Kujan (d.b.a. Tech Stevedore LLC) is responsible for committees and programs at the Morris County Economic Development Corporation (EDC), part of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce.
Ugh! I forgot what I came here for.
Any locals want to rate all the coffee shops for work away from home friendliness and wifi quality?
Also, thanks Beth – your prior article has good info. I know WeWork is the giant in this space, but their cookie-cutter approach in NYC is so wasteful. We were working with a subtenant and were just in awe of how well Ruckus’ sales person had sold them – they had a good $60K+ of switching gear per floor with about 5% of the network ports in use. Rapid growth in tech is so fascinating, it’s amazing to me how VC works.
I guess those places are new?
I’d love to look into them but they seem crazy expensive. I do the wifi design/maintenance on some co-working spaces in NYC and these Morristown options are $100/month more expensive than one of the nicer ones in SoHo! What are they thinking? They are even more expensive than Regus!
Also very sparse info on what their internet situation is – I know the places I setup spend a fair amount of cash to ensure that tech workers that need to do voice/video on wifi or work on remote/interactive command-line stuff can work without lag/interruption, they have backup connections (usually fiber with cable as a backup). As such, those spaces usually have some “about our network” brag pages on their site – I see nothing for either of these.
I know from the management side it’s easy to run your costs up if you succumb to the “outsource everything” model – there’s a whole industry around serving co-working spaces and if you don’t have in-house talent to implement some of the services you can end up either handing all your profits to a dozen different SaaS vendors or just gouging your customers to make up for all your recurring SaaS costs.
Here’s everything I know Charles
https://morristowngreen.com/2019/04/15/heart-of-morristowns-entrepreneurial-ecosystem-shared-work-spaces/
There will be another Startup Moveup Morris space opening in Florham Park. However, the decision has not been made about whether this will be only for Morris County Chamber of Commerce members, or open to others. Seems to me if its branded it should be open, but its going to be small, and we’ll see how it fills up. It will be modestly priced though.
Cheers Charles!
Beth
Check out En Masse CoWorking and the website LiquidSpace, which shows you a variety of coworking rental options.
I’ve been looking for nearby co-working spaces for years, all I’ve seen in Morristown so far are some very pricey office rentals, no shared-space options. Am I missing something? The article says there are a half dozen? I know of one in the HQ Plaza towers and one near the hospital, both are expensive and sterile and offer all sorts of other services I don’t need (PO Boxes, receptionist services, etc.).