Portland has seen a quiet resurgence in coworking and shared space activity as of late. Tech, makers, food, clothing… are all finding ways to collaborate in shared spaces. Even Starve Ups—the longest running accelerator in the area—is building out its footprint. But there are some young upstarts too. Like a new hackerspace in North Portland called CTRL-H.
How did this come about? Oh, you know. Geeks.
A few years ago, a geek bought a building at 7600 N. Interstate Ave. in Portland with the intent of turning it into a hackerspace. However, this didn’t work out, and the building sat unused for a few years.
Meanwhile, in Grand Rapids, MI., a large makerspace had a fire in their high voltage lab. The geek who owned the building had a large variac sitting in this building that they needed, and offered it to them. They were quite happy to take it, and made a trip up to Portland to accept said variac, and a few other things.
Meanwhile, another geek on the westside of Portland got the bright idea to start looking for a building on the westside of Portland (and is still looking, by the way) for a hackerspace, and contacted the large makerspace to see if they knew of any buildings that could be used. They put him in touch with the geek who owned the building. This building was not in an ideal place for a westside space (since it wasn’t on the westside). So this geek instead put said geek in touch with an existing hackerspace community in Portland.
They’ve currently got a try before you buy thing going if you’re interested.
For more information, visit CTRL-H.
Comments are closed.
That would be awesome! Drop me a line at rick at piepdx.com and we’ll get it figured out.
Hi Rick, thanks for the writeup. I’m the “geek” who runs the website. 🙂 Would you like to come around soon for a tour?