Summit Cowork Holds Grand Opening, Ribbon Cutting
NJTechWeekly.com stopped by Summit Cowork Sept. 4, 2014 for the grand opening of this workspace being run by Carlos Abad and Jason Frasca of LaunchNJ.
New Jersey is experiencing an explosion of coworking spaces, and the newest entries are Summit Cowork, in Summit; Equal Space, in Newark; and The Domain, at Lam Cloud, in Cranbury.
The Summit space is located on the second floor of the River Road building that houses Gearhart Law, an intellectual property firm specializing in patents and trademarks. Gearhart is a supporter of the tech community in New Jersey, and has provided the 1,400-square-foot facility for the co-working venture.
Coworking is essential to the development of a vibrant tech ecosystem in New Jersey, providing tech entrepreneurs with a chance to rub elbows with other tech entrepreneurs, and to cross-pollinate ideas, trade approaches and share inspiration.
LaunchNJ, which is applying for nonprofit status, is an organization that Abad likes to say was formed “by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs,” and is associated with various meetup groups in New Jersey.
After a barbeque attended by at least fifty of the area’s tech entrepreneurs, and featuring food [mostly] cooked by Frasca, the mayor of Summit, Ellen Dickson, participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony.
NJTechWeekly.com went for a tour of Summit CoWork with Abad, who showed the common rooms, the room to be used for small meetups and educational sessions, and private offices. The space could be described as an open, warm, energetic environment designed to be collaborative and private at the same time, all with “blazing fast” WiFi.
Abad reminded us that he had been trying to develop a coworking space in the Madison-Morris- Summit area for about a year because he felt that co-working was essential to the development of the tech community in this part of the state.
He and Frasca will also be running the Summit Cowork Entrepreneurial Academy from the space, which will be “pumping out a steady flow of educational programs for entrepreneurs and developers,” he said.
Gearhart Law says that it is the first and only law firm to offer a long-term coworkspace for entrepreneurs on its own premises.
