Laura Glesby Photo
Giulia Gambale: Known was a source of motivation and community.
The coworking space: Relatively quiet, closing in October.
Remote workers, local artists, and self-employed entrepreneurs who currently rent desks at Known will have to find a new place to work by mid-fall.
The coworking space is officially closing at the end of October due to funding difficulties, after years of trying to stay afloat through a seismic shift in Americans’ relationship to the office.
Known’s closure also comes after a wave of coworking spaces popped up across New Haven in the 2010s. Some of those, like the Grove, have long since closed. Others, like DISTRICT, have held on.
For five years on the fourth floor of 139 Orange St., Known has served as a shared office for individuals and organizations, offering a mix of open desks, rented offices, conference rooms, and event spaces.
Known evolved into an entrepreneurship incubator providing support to 47 small businesses owned by people of color through a program called the Knownpreneurs Growth Lab, as well as technical assistance to applicants for the Community Foundation’s New Haven Equitable Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (NHE3) grant.
“We were hit, as all the coworking spaces were, by Covid,” when many office employees started working from their apartments, said Known founder Juan Salas-Romer, who also owns the historic Palladium building at 139 Orange St. where Known is located. “We had a really tough time last year.”
He also observed that the limited parking options downtown may have deterred people from joining.
“Known really provided a vibrant hub of social and business connections,” Salas-Romer said. He expressed pride in Known’s community-building events, particularly for underrepresented small business owners: “Nearly 600 minority-owned businesses participated in show and tells, fireside chats, wind-downs, networkings, mentorship seminars, and gallery openings.”
He shared gratitude for the people he met through Known and for “a vibrant New Haven that is both innovative and inclusive.”
As for the rest of the building, Salas-Romer said he’s phasing out a handful of AirBnb short-term rentals that have operated from the building in favor of having long-term tenants, which he said make more financial sense in that location.
The coworking space is slated to stop offering day passes and conference room rentals at the end of the month. It will officially close its doors on Oct. 31, after which Salas-Romer plans to rent out the office to a new nonprofit known as the Connecticut Project. Known will continue offering NHE3 grant assistance until December.
The locally-owned workspace combined an Instagram-worthy design (complete with exposed brick, minimalist decor, all-lowercase signage, and plenty of plants) with a distinctly New Haven identity, enhanced by a gallery from local artist Kim Weston of Wábi Arts.
“People have been looking for a space that doesn’t feel too corporate. We filled that need for sure,” said Known Operations Manager Giulia Gambale.
Molly Lorton: A good coworking space is hard to find.
On Wednesday afternoon, nonprofit consultant Molly Lorton appeared to be the sole person unaffiliated with Known to work on her laptop at one of the space’s communal desks. “I love the location. I love the atmosphere,” she said.
Lorton said she’s worked for a year at Aropa Consulting, a local nonprofit consulting group that rents space at Known in lieu of having a formal office. While she often works remotely from her apartment as a hybrid employee, Lorton said, “I’ll come here if I want to get out of the house.”
Now that Known is closing, “we’re trying to find [another] coworking space, and it’s really hard to find,” Lorton said. “There’s not a lot of coworking space that incorporate non-profits.”
While coworking spaces were once seen as a more laid-back and adaptable alternative to a typical office, Gambale reflected that since the pandemic, people have wanted an even greater degree of flexibility.
“They don’t want to come here necessarily every day. They want to wake up and see where they feel like going,” Gambale said. While many community members want to have Known as a coworking option, she surmised, their willingness to purchase long-term memberships has declined: “There’s demand and then there’s commitment.”
Gambale has run her communications business, SheSoSocial, out of a variety of coworking spaces in New Haven since 2009. Now that Known is closing, she’s taking the time to evaluate whether she wants to make a change or try something new as an entrepreneur.
“For me personally, being in a shared space has been very motivating. I always love learning and seeing what people are doing,” she said. “It’s kind of daunting to feel like you don’t have a space to do that.”
Maria Hawkel provides NHE3 grant assistance to Latino-owned businesses.
