Talent Dividend : Development News

A Miami-based co-working firm, Pipeline, is opening a Philadelphia outpost in Center City this November. The 21,000-square-foot Pipeline Philadelphia, as the facility has been dubbed, will occupy two floors in the Graham Building at 15th and Chestnut Streets in Center City.

But don't expect Pipeline's local outpost to resemble any of the DIY-influenced co-working spaces that have popped up here in recent years. The company's Miami branch -- known as Pipeline Brickell -- is a highly polished environment offering reception services and private suites starting at $849 a month. According to CEO Todd Oretsky, Pipeline also isn't one of those shared corporate office spaces that tend to price out anyone lacking an expense account. The company aims to foster an especially diverse work space, one where established business professionals and startup entrepreneurs can find themselves collaborating.

"There's a big differentiator between us and other co-working spaces," says Oretsky. "We think integrating people in the tech community and the startup world alongside active professionals leads to the highest likelihood of success."
 
To facilitate that community, Pipeline Philly plans to offer a wide schedule of events, including lectures and educational seminars featuring thought leaders; many will be free to the general public. All the better to facilitate the office's all-important philosophy of cooperative congregation.

"We are very high-design," adds Oretsky. "We have price points that can work for a blogger or a member of a large international corporation. And those two people benefit from knowing each other."
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Todd Oretsky, Pipeline  
 

A little over two years ago, the West Philadelphia-based Enterprise Center celebrated the opening of its 13,000-square-foot Center for Culinary Enterprises (CCE), a shared incubator space where retail food entrepreneurs without a commercial kitchen facility of their own could set up shop.
 
The CCE has since become a powerful resource among the city's start-up retail food community; click here and here to read previous Flying Kite reports on the venture.
 
Around the time of the CCE's launch, Bryan Fenstermaker of the Enterprise Center Community Development Corporation (TEC-CDC) began receiving feedback that a different community of culinary entrepreneurs -- would-be restaurant owners -- was also interested in acquiring start-up assistance. So a plan was hatched to create Common Table, a restaurant incubator that will offer technical, financial and managerial assistance.
 
Common Table is currently being constructed inside one of the CCE's three retail spaces at South 48th and Spruce Streets. It will feature a rentable 40-seat pop-up restaurant for amateur or experienced chefs who would like to take their culinary creations public. The restaurant space is scheduled to open this fall.
 
In the meantime, an application process opened two weeks ago for a 6 to 12 month fellowship that will test the brick-and-mortar restaurant concepts of six to nine participants. The selection process will involve a business plan submission and a tasting competition judged by local culinary heavyweights.
 
Applications for the Common Table Fellowship can be accessed at commontablephilly.com.

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Allina Yang, TEC-CDC

Following two years of fundraising, brainstorming and community meetings, Drexel University is celebrating the grand opening of its Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships. On June 12, the school cut the ribbon on the 1.3 acre site.
 
The genesis of the three-building complex -- located at 35th and Spring Garden Streets -- was a $10 million donation from Dana and David Dornsife, an active philanthropist couple. (Dana is a Drexel alum.)

According to Lucy Kerman, the school's vice provost of university and community partnership, university extension centers -- in which the collective expertise of a school is used to solve problems and otherwise assist the local community -- have a rich history dating back to the late-19th century. The Dornsife Center has the potential to become "a place where every single college and school [at Drexel] could be engaged with the community in shared problemsolving," she says.
 
Programming has already begun. Drexel’s law school students, for example, have been fulfilling their pro bono requirements by offering free legal services at the Dornsife Center. And, as Kerman points out, "We've got folks in English who could be running a writers house. We have folks in engineering who might do weatherization. We have a wonderful set of health sciences programs, and we could be doing screenings."
 
In the meantime, a community advisory council that was formed prior to the site’s renovation is continuing to meet monthly; its input will play a role in the programs and services offered in the future.
 
"[At Drexel], there are lots of different kinds of expertise," explains Kerman. "Working together with community partners, we feel that we have an opportunity to do something really special."

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Lucy Kerman, Drexel University
 

Benjamin’s Desk, one of Philly’s premier coworking spaces, is expanding their Center City digs. This past weekend, in lieu of simply hiring a consultant to do the work, they tapped local talent from the Young Architects Forum (YAF) to generate ideas for the new space.
 
"It’s important for us to involve not only our current members, but also the local community to collaborate on our plans for expansion," explains Benjamin’s Desk co-founder Michael Maher in a press release.
 
When Benjamin’s Desk approached YAF—a program from the American Institute of Architects—to lead a design charrette for the new space, the organization jumped at the chance. "We saw it as a great chance for YAF designers to solve a real world problem and actually pitch their ideas to a client," explains YAF's Jeffrey Pastva. "Most don’t have opportunities like this anymore." 
 
"The event was very successful," says Pastva. "There were a number of very high level solutions given the time constraint." Pastva believes turnout is what made the event so productive—participants from various design fields, including architects, industrial designers, interior designers and students, all participated in the charrette.
 
"The designers were divided into teams of three, each with folks from various backgrounds," explains Pastva, adding that each team was then given two hours and a number of resources to complete their task. In short: How can Benjamin’s Desk best expand into the eighth floor of the Allman Building at 1701 Walnut Street?
 
Pastva says the solutions were diverse, thoughtful and practical. "There was something about each solution that was better than the others," he adds.
 
"Best Of" awards were offered, including Best Overall Presentation, Most Resolved/Practical and Most Innovative. Accorinding to Pastva, Benjamin’s Desk was excited about the ideas generated and may consult teams about certain concepts in the future.
 
Moving forward, Pastva hopes YAF can use this event as a springboard for other charrettes and networking opportunities. "Designers want real world problems to solve," he says. "Marrying that with networking opportunities for young designers is important to YAF. That’s the idea here."

Source: Jeffrey Pastva, Young Architects Forum
Writer: Greg Meckstroth

As part of the annual DesignPhiladelphia festival last Wednesday at the Center for Architecture, 11 presenters from different creative backgrounds fast forwarded through 20 slides at 20 seconds each (that’s a quick 6 minutes, 40 seconds) to answer a question that is typically reserved for the long-winded among us: What’s next for Philly? 
 
This is what the first annual Fast Forward Philly was all about; presenters were asked to talk, quickly, about their big ideas for the future of the City. And they were asked to do it fast in an effort to keep interest high and energy levels higher. 
 
Ideas were incredibly diverse; anything from ‘Silicon Philly! City of Innovation & Opportunity’ to ‘Making a Gardenpark in the City’ and ‘Promoting a "Maker" Economy’ were discussed.  But according to event organizers Kathy Lent and Erike De Veyra, enthusiasm was equally shared.  “We never had fewer than a hundred in the audience throughout the evening, and they all seemed quite engaged,” says De Veyra.  “We noticed that attendees sought out the presenters during intermissions and stayed long past the end of the official event to continue their conversations.”
 
“It was definitely successful.” exclaims Lent. “Despite the untested format and considering the number of other great DesignPhiladelphia events going on that night, the room was full the entire time.”   
 
The organizers received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both audience members and presenters.

“More than anything, they wanted to know how to find out more about the ideas brought up,” says DeVeyra.   

Michael Burlando and Alex Feldman's presentation on "Philadelphia Summer Olympics 2024" was particularly popular among attendees.
Ultimately, initiating the conversation on big ideas like these was the goal of Fast Forward.  “We hoped to inspire audience members to learn, connect, and maybe make some of these ideas actually happen,” says Lent. 
 
Earlier in the year, Lent and De Veyra, both of whom are architects in training, came to the conclusion that there were far too many big ideas going unnoticed in Philadelphia.  “There is a hub of creatives in this city with different perspectives and experiences,” explains De Veyra, “and it would be fantastic if they talked more to each other.”  And so, to facilitate the conversation, Fast Forward was born. 
 
Erike and Kathy both anticipate that, since Fast Forward was so popular, it will turn into an annual event.  Next time, expect an even greater set of multidisciplinary presenters and ideas.  “By the end of the event, it was clear that nearly every presenter was either an architect or trained in architecture,” remarks Lent, who says that was an unintended consequence.  For next year, she says their goal is to “attract many diverse perspectives on ‘What’s Next for Philly?’”
 
By appealing to a wider cross-section of forward-thinking Philadelphians, De Veyra and Lent believe this will help differentiate Fast Forward as a forum for up-and-coming doers and thinkers to pitch their vision for the future of the city.  “The world is always changing and needs new, fresh ideas,” says De Veyra. “This is one place we hope to continue sharing that energy and enthusiasm.”    

Source: Kathy Lent and Erike De Veyra, Fast Forward Philly organizers
Writer: Greg Meckstroth