Bygone-era design a key for startups

GROWING TREND: 121 Nexus software-developer interns Joseph Triska and Crystal Ngai work in The Founders League incubator space. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT
GROWING TREND: 121 Nexus software-developer interns Joseph Triska and Crystal Ngai work in The Founders League incubator space. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT

Walking into the common area of Betaspring, the startup accelerator at 95 Chestnut St., Providence, is how emerging entrepreneurs meet. And it’s not an accident that they do so.
“We have an open, central communal space to host larger and smaller gatherings, but also to provide a nexus to meet purposely but also randomly,” said Owen Johnson, a Betaspring founder and managing partner. “Serendipity is an important aspect, to encourage random connections.”
Twentieth-century city buildings like this one, known as the Russell Irons Building, that have been renovated through adaptive reuse to house a mix of commercial, creative or residential enterprises, share some architectural features in common, highlighted by the preservation of open spaces mixed with partitioned or walled-off office or studio space.
Liliane Wong, a professor and department head for interior architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, defines adaptive reuse as transforming an unused or underused building into one that serves a new purpose, “reimagining existing structures” as well as “creating connections across the fabric of time and space.”
Historic mills typically had high ceilings to accommodate manufacturing equipment and large windows to let in natural light. As they became vacant, reuse enabled features like the wide-open spaces, hardwood floors and post-and-beam construction to preserve a character that now sets them apart, tenants say.
To that end, the Russell Irons Building, which Betaspring leases, the Mercantile Block on Washington Street in Providence, where much of the programming for AS220 takes shape, and Anchor, a mixed-use building at 42 Rice St. on Federal Hill, exemplify how adaptive reuse can marry form and function.
Located on the third floor, Betaspring outfits its open area with a mix of work benches, couches and even hammocks for people to work creatively in a more relaxed atmosphere. “We really want someone to walk into that space and say, ‘Wow, this is a place that I can make things happen in.’ ”
Betaspring has enclosed offices where individual teams can “go and have private conversations” while keeping collaborative areas open for socializing, said Matt Fair, a commercial real estate broker with Hayes & Sherry, who sold the Russell Irons building to Hecht Development Co. of Gloucester, Mass.
Another gathering space for startups in the same building, The Founders League, features dedicated desks on the fifth floor for those working full time, and open space on the fourth floor, where people come and go intermittently. Both floors are supplemented with semiprivate offices for more mature companies, said Melissa Withers, Betaspring’s chief of staff.
The league is a program of Betaspring, the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, Brown University and the University of Rhode Island.
Matt Grigsby, co-founder of Anchor and CEO of Designer Material, a sourcing company and industrial-design consultancy specializing in sustainable technology and manufacturing, adapted the building to multiple uses: office space, event space, a gallery, co-working space and artists’ studios. His aim is to develop a community of artists and designers, though he shies away from the incubator label.
“We’re a hybrid,” said Grigsby, “a hub and home for startups.
Structurally, that translates into a building divided on one level into three sections, he said: a room with 14 separate professional office spaces, 25-foot ceilings and walls that go up halfway; another room with artists’ studios, part of a woodshop and a gallery; and a third room for the full woodshop and its machinery. The gallery extends along one edge of the building, unifying it, and is used for launch parties and other events, and to show artwork. Entrepreneurs like Johnson and Grigsby “need even more flexibility because they never know quite what project is next, so [some large areas] with no columns and no walls would be ideal,” said Wong.
That’s what Grigsby found when he hired architect Christine West of Kite Architects in Providence to adapt the building to meet his needs.
At Anchor, “there are a lot of people working together who may not be in the same company,” said West.
The Mercantile Block, one of three buildings AS220 owns downtown, houses commercial and nonprofit businesses and residential space on four floors. It reopened in 2010 after being gutted and renovated at a cost of $15 million, said Managing Director Aaron Peterman.
“A lot of the interior walls, to accommodate especially the first- and second-floor tenants, had to be changed entirely [and] knocked down for some larger spaces,” said Peterman.
A print shop and The Stable, a bar, can be seen in the rear of the building from Lucy Way, a pedestrian walkway. The print shop and digital fabrication labs on the first and second floor each feature open spaces with no walls, apart from a small office, darkroom and vent room for etching.
Cynthia Langlykke, development director at AS220, added: “There’s a wonderful exchange between the space and street life, and it adds to the overall cultural scene of Providence.”
Adaptive reuse in these buildings also included preserving large windows and natural light. While that light can be counterproductive if it is reflecting off computer screens, Wong said, it also can be inviting.
“You really want to create an aspirational space,” said Johnson. •

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