Moncton’s La Station Expands To Launch Community Incubator, Rooftop Garden
MONCTON – The 10-year restoration of the Botsford Station, a former hat factory built over 100 years ago, is a “story that’s still writing itself,” says owner Dan Gillis.
But Gillis and business partner Mylène Després’s vision for a community hub is taking shape as they set out to launch a community incubator and rooftop garden in 2021 as part of co-working space La Station.
They took advantage of the closures caused by efforts to mitigate Covid-19 to set out for a nine-week renovation, which includes the replacement of a 107-year-old leaky roof. It was “the messiest and biggest job” in the restoration so far, with 6,000 lbs of tar and gravel removed and a new roof installed over nine weeks, Gillis said.
“Through all the years that we’ve owned the building, we’ve often gone on the roof and dreamed about how amazing it would be to be up there and to be able to be there in a sustainable way,” Gillis said. “You get to see the city, you get to see the foliage, the amount of trees that you actually have in the east end of Moncton and downtown. So we want to create a space up there that’s accessible for everyone.”
Gillis says Botsford Station has always been “a place for people and ideas to come to life.” In the last decade, it’s been host to several successful startups like Porpoise, Alongside and creatives like video production firm Botsford Bros.
In 2019, Després, the founder of La Station Support, teamed up with Gillis, who also co-founded Porpoise, to gather community-minded entrepreneurs and organizations in the building. They turned the second floor into a co-working space called La Station.
Although Botsford Station is a privately-owned commercial property, Gillis said it’s run as a for-profit social enterprise. Any profit made is reinvested into the infrastructure. Gillis says the model has allowed flexibility, while still investing in community building.
“We haven’t ever relied on any sources of outside funding or any grants. This has been a commercial real estate project with community at the heart since day one. And we chose for-profit social enterprise as a vehicle for that because of the flexibility and autonomy that provided,” Gillis said.
“We were able to be nimble, we were able to flexible over the years, we were able to bootstrap, we were able to figure it out during the hard days…and those moments when we didn’t know how we were going to pay the power bill.”
A Community-Building Project
Gillis says his job is “to create space and create connections” to allow for community projects to happen. Soon, La Station will be the platform for a community incubator that will launch in early 2021.
Collaboration is already happening at La Station. Even with the expansion project, members Garden Cities Project and Nordais Architecture are helping.
But Gillis and Després hope space for a community incubator will help forge even more collaboration among its current members, which include local, provincial, regional and national community organizations, and community-minded entrepreneurs, and new members.
“For us, the intention and the vision here was to create a community hub, where individuals who are changemakers in our communities would come together to certainly do their own work here, but also to cross-pollinate, to connect and to know other people who are doing this purpose-driven work in our community,” Gillis explained. “And what we’ll do is we’ll facilitate that through shared space and shared brainpower.”
“Dan and I come from very different backgrounds, but that’s what united us with our passion for community and seeing change and inclusion, but also having a better world,” Després said
“It’s our mission, it’s our cause, it’s the thing that brought us together. But we’re using business, in this case, as a vehicle to make change,” he said. “Post Covid-19, it’s clear, this is just the work we have to be doing.”
The pandemic affected La Station, too. Després said less than half of its full-time and part-time members returned when the space was reopened. Some punch-pass holders also didn’t return. But in the last few weeks, new members have signed up.
“I feel like there’s new energy in here and it’s really nice,” Després said, adding she expects to see more people continue working remotely in the future.
“It feels like we’re almost where we were [before Covid-19],” Gillis said. “But the momentum towards now people who are working from home, this sort of desire to connect with other people, to see other humans, to work from a safe working environment is really strong and stronger than it was before.”
Not only will the newly renovated 3,300-square-foot third-floor space increase capacity for dedicated private offices, it will also add shared spaces, and rooms that are “malleable” to fit the needs of the user, Després said.
The second floor, also 3,300-square-feet, could fit between 30-40 people with Covid-19 restrictions, depending on whether they’re working individually or in work bubbles. The third floor will have about the same capacity. In normal times, each floor could fit up to 60 people at once, though members usually don’t use the space at the same time.
There’s also a bicycle storage room in the basement, and members have access to Wi-Fi, coffee, kombucha, a Slack channel, and an app-based security system.
Next year, members will be able to grow plants in the community rooftop garden. They’ll be able to work or relax on the third-floor patio or on the rooftop. Gillis and Després plans to have a type of elevator from the basement to the roof to make it accessible for wheelchair users. They also plan to power at least a section of the third floor with renewable energy, primarily solar.
The community incubator will be based around four pillars – youth, sustainability (including renewable energy), food security, and culture. The pair says those themes emerged from the types of organizations and individuals who are already members at La Station.
“There’s this theme around if you’re into renewable energy, if you’re into food security, if you’re into connecting and building a stronger community and culture, or if you’re a young up and comer that wants to make a difference in the world and you want to make an impact on the future, then we want to see you here,” Gillis said.
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