Moncton Co-Working Space Gearing Up For Fall Incubator Opening
MONCTON — Crews from La Station, a co-working space located at Botsford Station in downtown Moncton, have been busy over the last several months in creating a community incubator, offices for local businesses and a dedicated art gallery.
It’s all culminating together for a grand reopening this fall.
Mylène Després, founder and owner of La Station, said in an interview she started the company to provide operational support for small businesses and create a collaborative workspace for entrepreneurs like artists and freelancers.
In the first stages of Covid-19 lockdown, Després and business partner Dan Gillis, owner of Botsford Station, spent time renovating the 107-year-old former hat factory. Since then, the company has welcomed back most of its entrepreneurs who work from the space.
“We have upwards of 60 to 75 members that come in either every day, once a week, a couple times a week or when they’re in town,” said Després, adding having to close briefly during Covid was a blessing in disguise.
Després said the community incubator would be based around four pillars – youth, sustainability, food security and culture. Seven offices, all of which are 100 percent booked, will take up 50 percent of Botsford Station’s third floor. They will be move-in ready by September.
“The other 50 percent of the space being shared community space for new purposes in the building,” said Gillis. “So, we’ve got a shared meeting room we call the “Tink Tank,” where we do our tinkering, and then we’ve got a big shared room that we call the Dreamtorium.”
Gillis said the Dreamtorium is a space where it can be anything for anything a person needs it. He named some ideas ranging from a yoga studio to an art gallery and everything in between. There will be one-time rental slots as well as memberships for recurring rentals, Després said.
“We are getting a lot of interest in the Dreamtorium idea,” said Gillis. “It’s going to allow us to continue to be flexible and stay open to the community, and really the point of this project is to help create community connection.”
To help cultivate community connections, the incubator will include a series of Open Space meetings, a workplace method where participants circle around and create a collaborative plan surrounding themes like opportunities on community connections.
Unlike some other incubators, there won’t be dedicated programming to help a person create a start-up. But instead, this will give people a chance to network and collaborate on projects with others.
In addition, Després said La Station would also host “Fuckup Nights,” a global movement and event series that involves business owners sharing their stories of professional failure and how they moved past it. La Station has already hosted the event for two years now.
“We’re really looking forward to doing it,” said Després. “Now, because we’re not just entrepreneurs or freelancers here at La Station, we decided to have a set of three: one entrepreneur, one person from a not-for-profit sector and one artist.”
The grand opening will take place on October 6 and 7 with scheduled tours of the space, the two open space meetings, a “Fuckup Night” and more. Després said she’s looking forward to seeing the plan going forward and how Moncton can grow.
“It’s just kind of surreal to see everything actually going,” she said. “We’ve put so much intention in everything that we do here, but it’s really the intention and what we want to see for our city and how we want to see our city grow and to [help] people learn together. It’s just wonderful.”
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Aaron Sousa is a summer intern for Huddle. Send him story suggestions: [email protected].