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There seems to be something special about shared working spaces. No longer do people crave the quiet, solitude and familiar faces – instead people are gaining inspiration from the people around them. As well as being a much cheaper alternative, research suggests people are thriving in co-working spaces and Liverpool is living proof how successful and craved they are. News recently struck about a new working space based in the Lager Room of Cains Brewery – the once vacant space that has recently come alive with food markets, crazy golf, vintage warehouses and more. Well, they do say work hard and play harder so this might be the perfect place for it.
We sat down with Tomi Jones to hear more about the Brewery Works and their plan of how they’re bringing a once dormant space back to its divinity:
How did the idea for The Brewery Works come about?
During the Summer we had preliminary conversations with Cains about the potential for developing office space within the Listed Building to bring commercial spaces to compliment the growing and thriving leisure/retail businesses that had recently opened with such amazing success such as the Baltic Market.
What can we expect it to look like?
When we were shown the Lager Room we were amazed at how beautiful the room was with its huge volume and arched roof and exposed steelwork. We knew we had to try and do something with it even though it had no floor, sections of the roof were collapsing and several pigeons had made it their home for the last few years! The Listed Building is such an iconic and interesting building we felt we had to create something that would do it justice.
We’ve been working with a brilliant local architect, Miles Pearson, who designed The Baltic Market. So far we have inserted 3 floors within the space and by keeping them set back from the large arched windows facing Stanhope St we have retained part of the large full height space which made the space so special in the first place. The ground floor area that benefits form the full height space will be co-working. Partly hot desking and part dedicated desk space.
There will be 12 dedicated studios over the 3 floors that will have glazed screens and balconies looking out over the co-working spaces on the ground floor. There will be chill out rooms, break-out spaces and hopefully a wellbeing centre within the basement.
What made you want to open a shared working space?
We were adamant from the start that there would be affordable spaces for young start-up businesses to use. The co-working space will hopefully develop into a community of people that collaborate and help each other to grow supported by on site business mentoring and events. We would love to see people with ideas that may not even be businesses yet, using the space and being supported to grow and develop into successful businesses. The development of start-up businesses would ideally progress through our site from co-working to desk rentals and ultimately to renting dedicated studio spaces. It’s how we progressed as a business ourselves within Baltic Creative and their support was invaluable then and still is now.
We have consulted closely with other Baltic Triangle stakeholders such as Baltic Creative CIC to ensure that we are developing in a way that compliments the overall area strategy for commercial spaces. We were never going to develop in isolation but in partnership with other established businesses, that’s what we love about the area. If you’re doing the right thing people will get on board and help. It’s a great community.
When will you be open?
We have already agreed studio spaces with several businesses for the end of November so we better get cracking and get it finished! You can check us out @breweryworks on Instagram, we’ve got a website coming soon.
We can’t wait to see the finished project! If you’re looking for a space like no other, give them an email info@breweryworks.co.uk