By James Feichtner
With the growth in popularity for coworking space companies like Launch Fishers in Fishers and The Speak Easy in Broad Ripple, Zionsville is looking to welcome zWORKS, a company based on providing a similar concept. At the Jan. 5 Town Council meeting, members of the council were presented with the concept by Co-founder Dan Moyers.
A consideration for an appropriation to use $10,000 of the Food and Beverage Fund as seed money for zWorks was discussed. While councilors were enthusiastic about the company coming to town, there were still concerns about providing the funds before the company had been established and what the town would get from being a partner with the organization.
“I wanted to pry a little bit deeper into how you would recognize organizations (the town of Zionsville) like ours that come in as a partner and not as a member, although there is some membership discussion there, but I think its important for us to land on the distinction of an entity like a town to come in to support, seed and fund the initial startup of something like this, which I’m very supportive of,” said councilwoman and newly elected council vice president Susana Suarez. “I just want to understand how this will be structured.”
Moyers responded to Suarez and said: “The town would map to our highest level of partnership which would be our gold level, we have three levels, and that would come with it all of the benefits of that. So front and center brand, a logo exposure on our website. There are three memberships that can be used by individuals whether that be council members or town staff that may need a place to touch down or land to work from as kind of an alternative. We’re also including the opportunity to do an event, so maybe there’s a town event of some kind that might like to use the space once a year, as an example.”
“I would like to see a little more meat and potatoes in it other than us just coming out with this,” said councilwoman Candice Ulmer. “If we could wait and see how things are going down the road; I’m all for voting tonight for the $10,000 and appropriating that, but I think I’m a little hesitant to release that until I see it [up and running].”
Another concern was that the approval of the use of funds for seed money would possibly open up the door for other companies to ask for similar funds from the town.
“My concern from us is that we might start a precedent giving seed money for other nonprofits or other companies or firms or groups that come to us with the same type of thing,” Ulmer said.
Ultimately the council agreed that the appropriation would be approved pending the signing of a lease, thus establishing a guaranteed location of the organization, which aims to locate “on or near Main Street.”
