Uptown Works Somerset Ribbon Cutting
Uptown Works, a new shared office space in Somerset, had its ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday, July 16, 2018. The building is looking for more occupants and people to hold meetings there. Emily Korns, the woman who is primarily responsible for the new Uptown Works, discusses what the new shared office space will do for the community. Congratulations to Ms. Korns for making Somerset a great place to start a business. Anyone interested should contact her at 814-701-0762.
Emily Korns has a particular goal in mind with her latest business venture: “To help make Uptown awesome,” she said with a chuckle.
The project, which is known as Uptown Works, is located in the former World’s Attic — a building built in the late 1800s as a hotel.
“I’ve been thinking about this. I’ve been talking to a million different people to see if they’d do it,” she said. “But nobody else wanted to do it, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’”
The idea is that self-employed people and businesses can pay to use the office space on a monthly or even daily basis. Conference rooms will also be rented out for gatherings.
The office space will consist of three floors, including the basement. The basement will be used as a work space and to store client inventory. Korns said a child care center will also be open on certain days for clients on that floor.
The first floor will have an open-collaboration area and the second floor will include private offices that can be rented.
Korns said the building will also feature various conference rooms and “telephone booths” — closet-like spaces where clients can have private phone conversations.
Clients will have 24/7 access to the building, which will feature “best in-class Wi-Fi” and “copious amounts” of coffee and tea, Korns said.
“The idea here is sharing,” she said. “It’s sharing resources; everybody is sharing a printer. You know, we are sharing office supplies, we are sharing a kitchenette. You know you come in and you grab whatever desk is available.”
Korns, a dietician who also does consulting work, said the idea for the workspace came after spending several years conducting her business out of her home and places such as coffee shops.
“I worked at coffee shops all the time — I mean I wrote my business plan in a coffee shop,” she said. “But they’re not open 24/7, you can’t print there, the Wi-Fi is kind of spotty, there’s no privacy to do calls. So those are some of the things that we’ll offer.
“The other thing that’s going to be a big benefit of this business is just kind of creating a network of professionals. So we’ll have professional education classes and programs here that are available to our members, and also as somebody who is kind of working by myself, I need to create my own colleagues and co-workers, so that’s what we’ll have here.”
