Hub of Chattanooga's new Innovation District to hold open house tonight

Co.Lab employees Tia Capps, left, and Allison Reedy work Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at the Edney Building.
Co.Lab employees Tia Capps, left, and Allison Reedy work Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at the Edney Building.

If you go

The Edney Innovation Center open house will be held tonight from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. This event is open to the public and provides the opportunity to tour the entire Innovation Center and meet current tenants. Free food and beverages will be provided. The Edney is at 1100 Market St., with the entrance on 11th Street. Street parking is available on surrounding streets of the Edney as well as nearby surface lots.

What's all the hubbub about the Edney Building, the hub of Chattanooga's new downtown Innovation District?

Find out tonight at an open house at the 11-story (counting the roof-top "gathering space") former Tennessee Valley Authority office at the corner of Market and 11th streets across from the landmark Patten Towers.

The Edney is now a privately owned office building that caters to creative workers in Chattanooga's "entrepreneurial ecosystem."

Nondescript on the outside, the 90,000-square-foot building has been updated to shed its past as a cubicle farm for federal office workers.

Drop-panel ceilings have been ripped out to reveal exposed concrete and utilities overhead. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls enclose spaces for collaborative work. Unconventional office fixtures include standing desks, at least one skateboard rack and a game room with arcade-style video games, pinball machine and dart board.

There's a kitchen on every floor and showers on the sixth floor available for those who bike - or skateboard - to work.

The Edney offers an alternative not just in style, but substance, with month-to-month leases that start at $200 for single workspace and a maximum three-year lease for ninth-floor office suites.

"You can't really find short-term leases in downtown Chattanooga," said Kelly Fitzgerald, who works for the team of local investors led by Jimmy White and Chuck Chitty that purchased the building from TVA for $1.35 million in May 2015.

A recent temporary tenant is second-floor office space used as the local campaign headquarters for Democrat Bernie Sanders' presidential primary race.

Fitzgerald is the founder of Society of Work, a pioneering collaborative workspace that opened in 2013 on the 13th floor of the First Tennessee building downtown.

She was recruited by the Edney's owners to move her co-working space to the sixth floor of their building. Fitzgerald also shows potential tenants around the Edney.

"I feel like the whole building is Society of Work on steroids," she said.

Other large Edney Building tenants include the Company Lab (Co.Lab) entrepreneur accelerator that takes up most of the first floor and the Enterprise Center, a public-private partnership on the fifth floor that oversees the 140-acre innovation district.

The fifth floor already has been the site of between 240 and 270 different events since October, said Ken Hays, the Enterprise Center's president. For example, in late January, hundreds of people crowded into the fifth floor of the Edney Building to hear entrepreneurs from 11 businesses talk about their startup businesses at Co.Lab's "Pitch Night."

Hays calls it the "collision floor" where creative professionals in various lines of work bump in to one another.

"The idea is breaking down silos, getting different people to interact," Hays said. "The workforce of today is a very collaborative workforce."

Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu @timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or twitter.com/meetforbusiness or 423-757-6651.

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