05 Feb Downtown co-working space to expand with first floor Orpheum Office Building purchase
Two years after starting her Hive co-working space at the Orpheum Office Building, Andrea Hattan is not only expanding her space there, but she’s purchased it, too.
“We were seeing an increased need for private office space and also workshop space,” Hattan says. “And then our very own floor happened to come available.”
As a renter, she says she’d already invested $15,000 in the space. Buying that floor “kind of helped me recoup that investment,” she says.
The Hive had been in about half of the 5,181-square-foot space, and now it’s expanding into all of it with nine new private offices and a workshop for up to 20 people.
With those additions, Hattan says, it was “a smarter business decision” to buy.
She had looked at moving off of Douglas, but Hattan says people told her it made a lot of sense to stay in such a well-known building, which is at First and Broadway.
“It’s an iconic space.”
Kristin Stang of InSite Real Estate Group and Ryan Hubbard of NAI Martens handled the deal.
“It’s a huge asset for downtown Wichita to have the property back with a local business owner, who plans to grow and expand into the space as an owner occupant,” Stang said via e-mail. “Andrea has a knack for architecture and design, so I can’t wait to see the finished product.”
Hattan was giving a tour of the space to her family when they told her a great uncle had done the artistic molding in the theater and lobby space in the building years ago when it was built, which she says was fun to learn.
In addition to providing space to work, the Hive also has a lot of networking and other events designed to help women in business.
“We say we’re women-focused, not women-exclusive,” Hattan says.
“There are so many places in the world where men have a leg up,” she says. “Opportunities . . . for mentorship and for promotion and things like that, and so this is a space where women can feel comfortable to be in a leadership role to come in and share their expertise.”
Hattan says men “can still be a part of the conversation, but they’re not always leading the conversation.”
There are now more than 200 members, and Hattan has compiled a large directory of women-owned businesses for anyone to use.
She says she started the Hive when she “needed a space to work from outside of the home where I wasn’t distracted by dishes and laundry and kids and dogs.” Hattan says she also wanted to be “where I would be around other inspiring people doing amazing things.”
“It turns out a lot of other women needed it, too.”
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