Cowork Niagara’s first location is in Downtown St. Catharines. Over the past two years we’ve had the pleasure of watching the Garden City’s downtown blossom into a thriving space filled with all sorts of options for entertainment, dining, and business.
Guest Writer: Trevor Twining, Chair of Cowork Niagara
We bring more than $3.5 million of economic impact into the downtown. There’s many reasons why downtown cores work especially well for coworking spaces, but here’s a few that are particularly important for us.
1) Connection to transit. Central location core to success
Much of a freelancer’s work is remote, which means once we get where we need to be, we don’t need travel regularly. We can take the bus, ride our bikes, or get dropped off in the downtown and then have everything downtown available to us. It costs less, saves time and energy, and is generally better for the environment.
2) Booming social scene. Good for business
Our members enjoy having access to the rich variety of restaurants, pubs and cafes available downtown. There’s always something different to eat, always a place to grab a coffee or drink and talk business, or just generally enjoy the things that are happening downtown.
3) The digital media community. New economy: New jobs
Downtown has a growing number of digital media companies making their home in the core. From the Generator at One to the dozen or more businesses along St. Paul St. and beyond, to the 50+ members that frequent Cowork Niagara’s space, having so many digital media pros in so small a footprint means that new projects can start quickly and take root with little effort. This creates high-value jobs and helps grow the local economy.
4) The happiness vibe.
Downtown people are just trying to get things done, and they’re succeeding. You can see how that positive vibe has an impact on the surrounding space. People in the downtown are hopeful, and that hope surrounds and supports everything we’re doing at Cowork Niagara. Likewise, our successes feed into that vibe and support others.
It’s our plan to have a space like the St. Catharines space in every municipality in Niagara that’s capable of supporting one. Our expansion framework looks at the vibrancy of a city or town’s downtown. Healthy downtowns make for healthy cities. St. Catharines is leading Niagara by example in this regard. We’re proud members of the Downtown St. Catharines community, and look forward to being able to say the same thing in other Niagara municipalities in the upcoming years.
Cowork Niagara operates a coworking space at 108 St. Paul St. in Downtown St. Catharines. They recently celebrated their 2nd anniversary downtown. For more information on Cowork Niagara and how to join, visit http://coworkniagara.com/.