Final Floorplan!
Here it is…the moment you’ve all been waiting for. (Not really, I know…it’s not your office.) This is our final floor-plan for 4403C…aka: The SparkBase Offices.
For those of you out there with no vision, I’ll post a few renderings later in the week.
Hammers start swinging on Feb 25th!
General Contractor Time!
So one of the things that people don’t often think about when building an office…the General Contractor. (GC as they are known in the industry.) This is the person that you’ll need te rely on to make sure 3 things happen. (I like numbering things.)
#1: You stay on budget.
#2: The architect’s vision stays intact.
#3: You stay on budget.
Initially I called a guy that I trust not to steer me wrong. My good friend Leigh Weinberg. He’s got years in HVAC build-outs, and I figured he’d be able to point me in the right direction. I was right.
Leigh hooked me up with Fred Shafer. He was the first GC I talked to that didn’t cringe when I mentioned a budget. This is important…it’s my money on the line here! $20K over budget turns a $10.50-ft buildout into a $10.80-ft. When you are talking about 3,500-ish feet, and a 5-year lease, that all adds up.
So Fred is our guy, and he starts in a few weeks. He’s telling me it’ll take about 6-weeks to build everything out. We’ll see ow that works, but I’m cautiously optimistic that he’ll pull it off.
Welcome aboard Fred!
Initial Floorplan
After we decided how much of our space to peel off, the next step was getting an architect on board. I’ve known Jeff Bogart for a long time, and knew I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time explaining what it is I do. The conversation went something like this…
Doug: Hey Jeff, it’s Doug Hardman.
Jeff: Doug! How are you man?
Doug: I’m great, I’m moving our offices to Cleveland and we need an architect.
Jeff: Where are you moving?
Doug: Tyler Village…it’s at 36th and Superior.
Jeff: Nice. When do you want me to stop by?
Doug: I’m here now. Can you come by?
Jeff: I’ll be there in 40min.
Jeff came out, measured a few things, asked a few questions, and he was off to his office.
Some of the things we were looking for in a space are…
#1: Wide-open area for our developers to collaborate.
#2: I giant-sized conference room where we can sit 10 people and not have to worry about it.
#3: Nice-sized offices for Geoff and I. (I wanted a ginormous one.)
#4: A nice Kitchen with lots of counter space and cabinets.
#5: A lounge where everyone can relax, watch some TV, and play some video games.
#6: Storage for now, and later.
Past that, it’s up to Jeff how he lays out the space.
2 days later, I got an email with this preliminary drawing.
Nice, and close to what we were looking for. We talked for a bit and we’re waiting to see what the changes look like.
SparkBase & Tyler Village article Crains!
Here’s the article that was printed in this week’s Crain’s Cleveland Business. Too bad they don’t know about this site!
Data services biz plots Tyler Village move
By CHUCK SODER
4:30 am, January 21, 2008
Data services company SparkBase LLC of Solon is planning to move its headquarters to Tyler Village in Cleveland.
The company, which processes transactions for businesses that sell gift and loyalty cards to retailers, is in the process of finalizing a lease to take 3,500 square feet on the third floor of Building 44 of the sprawling industrial complex, which was once the home of Tyler Elevator Products.
SparkBase will have the option to take another 2,400 square feet nearby, and it might need it, said company president Doug Hardman. The company, which aims to move in by March 1, will have seven or eight employees by the time it leaves its 1,000-square-foot headquarters on Bainbridge Road in Solon. It aims to employ 13 by the end of 2008.
“My company’s growing like a weed right now,” Mr. Hardman said, declining to give revenue or profit figures.
Mr. Hardman said he is moving the company to Cleveland because of the growing number of technology companies located downtown. He chose Tyler Village, which is just east of downtown on Superior Avenue, partly because interactive marketing company DigiKnow Inc. already is there.
“They gave it a lot of credence,” Mr. Hardman said.
Cleveland developer Graystone Properties Inc. is recruiting technology companies to Tyler Village in its effort to revitalize the 1.2 million-square-foot complex, which consists of more than 20 interconnected buildings.
The developer offers high-speed and wireless Internet access at the location, and it is trying to build community among tenants by adding more common space, said David Fleming, Graystone leasing agent.
The developer also is interested in recruiting biotechnology companies, Mr. Fleming said. For instance, Analiza Inc., a company that analyzes potential drugs for pharmaceutical companies, moved to Tyler Village from Solon last fall.
“We’re close to the Clinic, we’re close to downtown, we’re close to the freeways,” Mr. Fleming said.
If you get a chance to bust Dave’s chops about “adding more common space”, you are more than welcome. Everyone else in the office is. Overall, I think it was a pretty good read. I had some better quotes, but these will work. ;)
Tyler it is!
So after a few weeks of hunting/looking, we settled on Tyler Village.
(:: insert fanfare ::)
We felt that the overall direction of the developers and community were in line with what we were looking for. Geoff and I see this as being one of the next hot-spots in Cleveland, so we put it all together and started working on getting plans to build the space.
In other news, I got a call from a reporter for Crain’s Cleveland today. They were very interested in talking about the impending move, and about relocating to Cleveland. We talked for about an hour, and I’m excited to see what it is they find to write.
So…now the fun part starts!
Ikea Trip
Anyone that knows me knows that I’m quite impatient.
Angie and I had an afternoon to kill, so we headed out to Ikea in Pittsburgh to look for random ideas for the new space. Since this is a family affair…I figured I’d get her involved. She reluctantly agreed to throw Garrett in the car and trek to Pittsburgh with me. Here’s what we saw.
You’ll notice a lot of green stuff. That’s because we’re finishing up a Re-Branding of SparkBase. More on that later…
More Scouting with Sandy Coakley
In our search for a spot to call home, we connected with Sandy Coakley of Coakley Real Estate. He knows the Near West Side of Cleveland pretty well, so we had him show us a few things. We’d seen property with him before, but wanted to see a few things in the daylight. Here were a few that didn’t work for us, but were nice spaces anyways.
These were smaller than we were looking for, but once you get out there, it’s easy to ’stop by’ and take a look at things in, and out of your initial parameters. You never know what gems you’ll find!
Space Hunting with Rose Strauss
A quick breakfast meeting had Geoff and I off to meet with Rose Strauss. She’s been in the Mid-Town real estate game for a long time. This was one of the properties that we found and REALLY liked.
It was about 2,500sq and priced at only $900.00 a month!
We’d have signed on the spot, but the space had a few flaws we couldn’t overlook.
#1: It was tough to find. Not that we have a lot of traffic, but it was out of the way.
#2: To enter the building, you needed to walk past the dumpsters. So when they DO find the space, they’ll need to see the building’s trash.
#3: The parking was pretty slim.
The hunt continues…
Bathroom Idea
Here’s a cool bathroom I found.
For the guys, there is a urinal in between every stall. This gives you a lot of privacy. I also like the auto-soap dispenser.
West 6th Spaces with Sandy Coakley
One of the first people that I called when we decided to move was Sandy Coakley of Coakley Real Estate.. He used to be with a company that my former employer used, so I knew he had a grasp of the area, and what we were looking for.
We met on a cold December afternoon to look at a few spaces. The first one was pretty funny for me…it was my old office! (Sans-carpet, and a few walls that used to be there.)
While I loved that office, for me, it wasn’t a good fit for what we were looking for. It was a shade on the small side for our current growth path, but the price was right so it was worth a look.
Next, we went over one block to the Bradley building where the were finishing up a space that had some SERIOUS potential.
We went so far as to use our old-friend SketchUp to see what it’d look like with furniture.
Looks like we can fit about 15 people in here. Definitely on the short-list! Talking to the landlord, I think this will come in around $11.00 a foot built-out. My only caveat is the lack of parking, but we can work that out.