CAMDEN - Angelo Alberto has a sentimental connection to Camden.
“My parents courted here. My mom went to nursing school at West Jersey; this is where they shopped, where they ate, where they dated,” he recalled. “They’re in their 80s now, and they’re thrilled to see how it’s coming back.”
Alberto, whose eponymous architectural firm recently merged with three others to form City Invincible, is hoping to be part of that growth — but also to foster it by leasing space to startups and entrepreneurs who hope to make the city their permanenthome.
City Invincible — a merger of Alberto & Associates, Haley Donovan Architecture (both based in Haddonfield), Philadelphia-based Berzinsky Architects and La Vardera Architecture Design (now in Merchantville) — is preparing to move to a restored 1872 bank building by the end of the month. Alberto is planning on new office mates, too, and not all of them are architects.
“The city right now, it’s all about the in-between places: the streets, the cafes, the small businesses, the open spaces,” he said. “That’s where we’re hoping to come in.”
Each of the firms in City Invincible specialize inaspects of urban planning and architecture, including sustainability, hospitality, urban architecture, residential and commercial design, and educational and civic architecture.
Co-working spaces come to South Jersey
But the bank building will soon be home to other entrepreneurs plotting out their business plans and drawing up new products and services.
Co-working spaces aren’t new to South Jersey, or even to Camden.The Camden Co-Lab in the Waterfront Technology Center has hosted small businesses through incubator programs sponsored by Rutgers University-Camden and Drexel University. But as Camden County begins moving its offices into the Federal Street building, its current tenants had to move out.
With leases expiring at the end of 2016, some tenants found themselves facing the prospect of losing a work space.
Rosemari Hicks, a human resources consultant, was one of those tenants.She reached out to Camden County Freeholder Bill Moen for help.
"We were on the short track to vacate the space by the end of the year," she said. "But that wasn't very feasible. They were able to make some accommodations for us."
The Merchantville resident wasn't able to find space to purchase within her price range, so she also reached out to the Latin American Economic Development Association, a city-based nonprofit that assists small business owners in South Jersey.
With their assistance, she'll rent a newly-renovated building on Benson Street, then sublet it to other small-business owners.
"There was a need that wasn't being met in Camden," she said. "I work alone, but I sometimes meet with clients. I needed a space that wasn't home, but also wasn't a coffee shop, either."
CoWork Street, her new space,will be geared to very small businesses, those with a single owner/employee or professional.
"When you have those professional skill sets, what you're selling is yourself," she said. "That's still something you can grow organically. You're not looking to be the next Microsoft or Apple; you just want something you can take pride in and build."
LAEDA's CEO, Ray Lamboy, said small businesses, while key to Camden's commercial success, also face challenges bigger, more established businesses don't.
"A new building like the Rutgers nursing building has space for retail on the ground floor," he noted. "But any tenant has to bring in their own amenities, and build out the space. That's out of reach for a lot of small businesses."
Although Camden is a bargain compared to its bigger neighbor across the Delaware, Lamboy said it's still not necessarily cheap.
"If you're a one-man or one-woman show, it's challenging. A co-work space allows you to build over time."
"With all the anchor institutions like Holtec and Subaru moving into the city, there also has to be room for the smaller startups," Moen said. The county and city, he said, are committed to helping small business stay in Camden.
The sense of community fostered by co-working spaces is especially beneficial in a city like Camden as it works to shake off decades of economic stagnation and become a destination for businesses.
Khai Tran, whose nonprofit Waterfront Ventures works to bring small businesses to Camden, "educated me on co-working," Alberto said. Moen called Tran "a leader in opening up the eyes of entrepreneurs who might not have considered Camden as a place to do business."
The 27-year-old Cherry Hill nativewill be among those moving his office to Alberto's Market Street building, along with his collaborator, Johnathan Grzybowski.
Grzybowski's Waterfront Media, a web design and development company, will be an anchor tenant in the space, employing 7 to 10 people.
"When we first came to Camden fiveyears ago), it was really kind of a desolate place to do business," he said. He and Tran started Waterfront Media in the Waterfront Technology Center's Co-Labincubator, and he said the collaboration between the city and county have shown there's a concerted effort to keep small businesses in the city.
There's a youthful bent to the startups moving to the City Invincible space, with 28-year-old Grzybowski, Tran and 27-year-old Katrina Naidas all looking to move in soon.
Naidas, a 27-year-old Marlton native and Rutgers-Camden graduate, lives in Brooklyn but wanted to stake her nascent business to Camden.
The founder of Linked Noodle, a web resource for freelance teachers offering private lessons, Naidas is still in the process of populating and promoting the website. Camden, where she "can see my old third-floor dorm room from my office," was a natural fit.
"I really have a strong desire to build this business where I can grow along with other businesses," she said. "As great as New York is for networking, it's also really expensive. You look at a tech companylike Uber: It's a transportation company without a single car; that kind of flexibility means we can still be here, where we can give back."
Sam Mody, a Hammonton resident who's taken an equity ownership in Keller Engineering of New Jersey, will work in the space as well. His wife works at Cooper University Hospital, while Mody has long commuted to Edison, New York and other points north.
He specializes in civil and transportation engineering. "We want to be part of the future of Camden, part of the social fabric of the city," he said. "I worked on projects in Camden from 2008 to 2013, and I fell in love with the city."
"A common theme we hear from people coming to work here is that they already have ties to Camden," Moen said. "We hear from people that their parents or grandparents grew up here, or they went to school here.
"That speaks to the commitment people who are natives of the city," he said. "They know the city's pride. They want to try to help bring it back to what it once was."
Phaedra Trethan: (856) 486-2417; ptrethan@gannettnj.com
