Working together

Co-working is growing in popularity, and our neighborhood is in on the trend

Story by rachel Stone | Photo by Can Türkyilmaz

Working from home sounds great. Cooking a hot breakfast, staying in your pajamas all day, running a load of laundry at lunchtime. But too many hours in sweatpants with little adult interaction can be less than motivating and even a little sad.

Attorney Jennifer Bryan liked working from home, but she found it difficult to focus on work once her children arrived home from school around 3 p.m. each day.

“I needed my own space,” she says.

Bryan is one of a growing number of people worldwide who opts for co-working. She rents a space for her practice, JB Law, at The Hive, a co-working space on Fort Worth Avenue, which opened about a year ago. A new co-working space in our neighborhood, the Kessler Co-op, is expected to open next month.

There are about 1,800 co-working spaces worldwide, according to deskmag.com, which keeps track of trends and statistics in co-working. And the number of co-working spaces worldwide doubled in the year ending August 2012, the website reports. Deskmag.com counted 684 co-working spaces in the United States.

Kessler Theater owner Edwin Cabaniss says that when a call-center tenant moved out of a 2,500-square-foot space on the West Davis side of his building, he tried to think of what the best use of that space would be.

A co-working space is like a cross between a Wi-Fi coffee shop and an executive suite, he says. It’s more professional than a coffee shop, and it’s less formal and more affordable than a Downtown executive suite, he says.

Oak Cliff is home to a lot of creative professionals who have found themselves working as independent contractors since the recession, Cabaniss says. He expects the Kessler Co-op to appeal to professionals who already live in the neighborhood.

“I’m not marketing this to the businessman from Scottsdale that needs a place to land in Dallas,” he says. “It’s for someone who is working from home now and wants to be part of a creative community.”

The Kessler Co-op, which is part of the original movie theater, will offer super highspeed Internet, conference rooms, mailing

William R. Wilson Attorney at Law

addresses, cable TV, printers and scanners, and “all the things you need to function as a business,” Cabaniss says.

While the Kessler was under construction, Cabaniss worked from home himself.

“Working from home makes it hard to turn work off” at the end of the day, he says.

Tenants of The Hive say co-working is not just about having a place to work; it’s about community.

Monkey Tag, an upstart marketing firm, was among the first to lease a space at The Hive last year. The firm’s owners, Anthony Bearden and Gary Pedroza, don’t live in Oak Cliff, but they were drawn to our neighborhood’s creative environment.

“There are so many businesses that are just getting off the ground here, and we wanted to be a part of that,” Bearden says.

They already had a couple of big clients, Samsung and a commercial real estate firm, but they’ve added a few upstarts, such as Spokes pedicabs, through their connections at The Hive.

“There’s a different mindset and another vibe,” Bearden says. “We want to engage with people on a friendly level and do business over a beer.”

The Hive building is directly behind Andrew Howard’s house. When real estate developer Monte Anderson bought the building, Howard came to him with the coworking idea.

“I wanted an office because we had just started the Better Block, and we were kind of roaming around,” he says.

The idea was an immediate hit. All of The Hive’s six office spaces, plus an Airstream trailer finished out as office space, were leased in the first week it opened.

The Hive also provides space for com- munity meetings. The Fort Worth Avenue Development Group and the Kings Highway Neighborhood Association hold their monthly meetings there, for example.

The Kessler Co-op also will provide space for community meetings, Cabaniss says.

“When we opened the Kessler, we planned for it to be a community meeting place,” he says.

And it still is. But it isn’t always possible to accommodate everyone who wants to meet there. Neighborhood groups will be able to meet after office hours in the Kessler Co-op, and they can bring their own wine and beer. That’s not possible inside the theater, which has a liquor license, Cabaniss says.

It’s an awesome little place and a great location for not much money.

The Kessler also is planning networking mixers and occasional guest speakers. Back at The Hive, Howard is working on plans to expand. Demand is so high for co-working space there that he would like to open a second location closer to the Bishop Arts District.

“It’s a good place to be creative,” says Bearden of Monkey Tag, which rents the Airstream at The Hive. “We don’t really need more than this. It’s an awesome little place and a great location for not much money.”

THEHIVE

2139 Fort Worth Ave., 972.283.1111, oakcliffhive.com

Rates: A front office is now available for $600 a month, which includes electricity, Internet, coffee, printing, scanning, fax, coffee and beer. The drop-in rate is $25 a day with a 10 percent discount from Bike Friendly Oak Cliff if you ride a bike to work.

THE KESSLER CO-OP

1230 W. Davis, 214.272.8346

Rates: $300 a month for a permanent desk; $200 a month for access to the workspaces with no permanent desk; rates haven’t been set for permanent offices or drop-ins. Rent at the Kessler includes utilities, office services and other amenities.

Lakehill Preparatory School

Leading to Success. 2720 Hillside Dr., Dallas 75214 / 214.826.2931, lakehillprep. org

Community

The Dallas County District Attorney’s office is creating an animal abuse unit thanks to a fundraising campaign from Safer Dallas Better Dallas. This year, almost 3,000 cases of animal abuse have been reported, but only the worst cases are investigated. The nonprofit has committed to raising $200,000 to pay for a full-time prosecutor and an investigator in the first year. County Commissioner Elba Garcia made the collaboration with Safer Dallas Better Dallas possible, and County Commissioner Maureen Dickey and her husband, Roland, donated $40,000 to the campaign.

ST. JOHN’S EPISCOPAL

848 Harter Rd., Dallas 75218 / 214.328.9131 / stjohnsschool.org

Dallas ISD, the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League and the Texas Historical Commission unveiled a memorial in November to slain Dallas Police officer J.D. Tippit, who was shot to death by Lee Harvey Oswald at Tenth and Patton streets following the JFK assassination.

Nonprofits

Kings Highway resident Jenni Stolarski created a nonprofit, ReTree Oak Cliff, with the goal of planting 4,000 trees in our neighborhood by 2016. The Texas Trees Foundation donates the trees and provides a forester to determine where best to plant them. But Stolarski is raising money for the trees to be planted. ReTree Oak Cliff planted 300 trees in Kings Highway last month thanks in part to a $2,500 grant from the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League.

Go Oak Cliff raised $500 for sixth-grade students at Rosemont Elementary through the chili cook-off at Cliff Fest in November. The students are planning a trip to Washington, D.C., to attend President Obama’s inauguration this month.

People

Jewelry designer Ariel Saldivar, an Oak Cliff native, visited the set of “The Price is Right” last month. Her jewelry line, Olivia K, will be featured as one of the single-bid items in the “come on down” segment of the show on Jan. 30.

FD Luxe named several of our neighbors in its “new creative class” of 13 people to watch in 2013. They included artist Nicole Cullum Horn, artist Kyle Hobratschk, chef Omar Flores of Driftwood and Will Rhoten, aka DJ Sober.

Please submit news items and/or photos concerning neighborhood residents, activities, honors and volunteer opportunities to editor@advocatemag.com. Our deadline is the first of the month prior to the month of publication.

Cheering section

Young Life West Dallas members were among the youth groups and nonprofits that cheered on runners in the West Dallas Loop of the MetroPCS Dallas Marathon last month. Pictured, from left to right, are Corlisa Hockless, Kayla Hendrix, Brooke Ferguson, Anita Odom and Shirlisa Irving.

Music and sunshine

Members of La Rondalla, the free guitar program at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center, performed at Cliff Fest in November. Oak Cliff-based musicians Dennis Gonzalez, Aaron Gonzalez, Stefan Gonzalez, Kenny Withrow and Greg Prickett are the students’ teachers.

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