“(The building) is a classic example of types of buildings, in a location, in a community, that we like to invest in. So, we began this process of exploration and cooperation on how to develop the site that makes the most sense for the city of Hamilton and for our business,” Watkins said.
Part of that exploration was the application for incentives like grants or tax credits that would make the project “economically feasible” from a company perspective.
The city was able to offer the Second National Bank building as a prospective site after its Community Improvement Corporation purchased the dormant building for $230,000 last December from U.S. Bank.
Now that COhatch has committed to the project, Jody Gunderson, Hamilton’s director of economic impact, said the city will be looking into transferring ownership of the building through a development agreement “over the next couple of months.”
In its application to the State of Ohio for historical tax credits, COhatch estimated that the market value of the property would rise from its current $250,000 valuation to roughly $6.3 million after the project’s completion. The application also stated the project would cost around $11.2 million, while creating 61 year-long construction jobs and three full-time operations jobs alongside 233 tenant jobs after completion.
The $1.8 million Historic Preservation tax credit from the State of Ohio joins the roughly $2 million federal historic preservation tax credit that has already been awarded to the project. Construction is estimated to begin July 2023 and run until July 2024.
Hamilton City Manager Joshua Smith said he believes bringing COhatch to downtown will help equip the city to manage increasingly common work-from-home or hybrid work environments, while providing a much-needed full service restaurant on High Street.
“We do believe as we move into the future, that there’s going to be different types of hybrid-work environments, and we think COhatch … is one of the premier ones, and to have that brand in our community is going to be just an incredible asset,” Smith said. “It’s going to help us keep companies here, but it’s also going to help us recruit new companies into Hamilton.”
COhatch, founded just six years ago, has seen rapid expansion over the course of the pandemic as work situations have shifted across the country. Watkins said there was only one location in 2016, four at the time the pandemic began and 21 now, with more, including Hamilton’s, on the way.
“What’s happened in society, what’s happened with the pandemic, has only accelerated what was happening before the pandemic in terms of making it more favorable for our types of spaces,” Watkins said.
Watkins said COhatch’s venture into Hamilton is fairly prototypical of the projects his company does best, though the 26,000-square-foot Second National Bank building will be one of the company’s largest flagships.
“Typically, what we like to do is acquire architecturally and or historically significant buildings in walkable communities that, in most cases, have suffered from a lack of investment or attention,” Watkins said, adding that COhatch’s aim is to “bring those buildings back to life, and restore the buildings to their natural, original condition with modern amenities and facilities.”
COhatch’s Hamilton business model will broken down into at least four buckets.
The first bucket is the full-service restaurant, which will take up the basement and the first floor, while the rest of the four-story building will be allotted for office, co-working and event spaces.
The second bucket is private offices — a membership, rented out a year or two at a time — which Watkins said is used most often by professional service providers like lawyers, realtors, accountants. Sometimes, larger companies also rent out private offices within COhatch spaces if they’d prefer to forego their own building.
Third, there are coworking members — individual folks who buy different levels of monthly access passes, which allows them to work at any open desks within the building, whenever they want.
And, finally, there are standard event spaces, which Watkins said can be rented out for days or hours at a time for rates, no membership necessary.
Watkins said the makeup of COhatch clients is seeing a slight shift as companies move to a more permanent remote work model.
“We’re seeing more and more large companies, Fortune 500 companies, that are offering coworking memberships as an amenity to their stay-at-home or hybrid workforces so they can get away from the kids and the dogs and don’t have to work from Starbucks or Panera,” Watkins said.
COhatch also brings in “scholarship” partners, which is a way for not-for-profits and women-or-minority-owned startups to get in a workspace without having to take on the high costs of doing so in standard office buildings.
“A big part of what we do is to bring not-for-profits into our space and give them a professional place to work to accelerate what they’re trying to do, whether that’s to alleviate hunger or promote reading,” Watkins said. “Whatever their cause is, we want to be a part of that solution in that community to help them with what they’re doing.”
Smith said bringing in COhatch to Hamilton is another forward step for the city’s effort to redevelop itself and bring new businesses in, and he’s looking forward to what’s to come.
“We try to maximize any opportunity that’s provided to better the downtown, and in this case — coworking space, restaurant, bar, with the potential for even more amenities — we’re just thrilled that it’s just another piece of the puzzle for us in terms of making our downtown as vibrant and exciting as possible,” Smith said.
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