I just visited 1545 Willow st with Jenny and Craig.
We took photos and talked to the real-estate agent and landlord.
There were two spaces of a bit more than 3000 sqft but only one was wheelchair accessible. The other could be made wheelchair accessible, but it's on the second floor and the elevator has been taken out of service and some amount of money would be needed to re-instate it.
They showed us two spaces. The ground-floor is wheelchair-accessible ~3200 sqft space. The other space is about sudo room sized (we'll get the exact size soon).
The big space has five small offices on one wall with windows to the street. This is the only natural light coming into that space. There is another small office in the corner of the big space with no natural light. One of the small offices has a sink but the big room does not, so we'd have to spend some effort/money to get sinks in the main room, but it's definitely doable.
There are shared bathrooms with the other spaces in the building. They looked like they could use some fixing, but at least one sink and toilet was working in both men's and women's bathroom. There was a makeshift shower in the men's bathroom but it was disconnected.
The smaller room has natural light and a sink in the room.
Here are the photos. Mouse-over the images to see which space they are from.
The big space has a bigger entrance directly to the street that has been sealed off but can be easily re-opened if we want a direct entrance or if we need to bring in big equipment.
The spaces both have a working sprinkler system. The ceilings are tall enough in the big space that we could create more space by splitting some of the space vertically in half.
They said the deposit for the big space would be somewhere between three months rent and $9000.
The landlord is a bit off, but really happy and friendly, and he seems very flexible.
The real-estate agent said he would send me more info on the spaces, and I will forward to the group when I get it.
My personal feeling is that this is could be a really good space for us. We can start with the small space, but I'm also pretty excited about the bigger space. The only thing I didn't like is the lack of sunlight. We may be able to remedy that somewhat by removing the walls to a couple of the smaller offices.
I didn't ask on the list if anyone wanted to come along, because the real-estate agent called me at 2:20 and said he could show it to me at 3:00.
I also got a response from Margo Prado. It'd be easier to forward the email to the list, but I don't like forwarding emails to a public mailing list without checking with the author first, but here is a summary.
Margot wants to help us! She says she hopes to attend one of our open nights, possibly in September, and that she joined our meetup group.
She believes that anything that allows the "Research Service" activity is fine for us. Normally I'd be dubious, since it contradicts my own research, but Margot apparently wrote the new industrial zones in the mid 2000's and created the Research and Development activity. She probably knows what she's talking about :-)
She goes on to talk about a bunch of potential spaces, but I'll just forward the whole email to the list if she says it's ok. For now, I have attached the pdfs she sent me with some of the potential spaces.
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Marc