In February 2014 we began looking for a second home for uforia. It’s taken close to a year to find, design and build the perfect space in the perfect neighborhood, but we’re now just a month away from opening the doors to uforia studios Nob Hill!
We wanted to give you a behinds the scenes look at the process we’ve taken to find, design and now build our new studio. This week we’ll share with you our search process and how we ended up in Nob Hill.
The Research
When we started looking for the right place to build a second home for uforia studios, we began by looking at where our existing 6,000 clients lived. As expected, most live within a few miles of our studio in Palo Alto. However, there are also a lot of uforians scattered throughout the Bay Area, including over 350 clients who currently live in San Francisco. For the most part, these uforians commute to Palo Alto for work and find time to embrace the sweat with our Morning Warrior crew before work, during their lunch breaks, or in the evenings before heading back to the city.
The Search
We set out to find the perfect space in the perfect neighborhood to serve our existing San Francisco clients and many future members of the uforia family. We were lucky to find a great realtor, Chris Homs from Lockehouse Retail, who drove and walked us around our short list of neighborhoods for many hours over the course of several months. We had a laundry list of requirements – two-level stand-alone building, high ceilings, good visibility, a fitness conducive floor plan – that Chris judiciously screened for, but most importantly, we wanted to find a space with character and history, with great neighbors and landlords who cared, and the right overall vibe. When Chris presented us with 1561 California Street, we fell in love.
The Building
The newest uforia studios location is a standalone building in Nob Hill/Polk Gulch with around 4,500 sq ft spread over two levels. Built in the 1970s, it housed a small local market for many years. The building is set back about 25 feet from the sidewalk, which reduces visibility but creates a nice outdoor area – perfect for all of the social activities that you know we love in the uforia community! It needed some loving renovations, but it had good bones and, most importantly, is on a great stretch of California Street, between Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. The neighbors are awesome and there is a lot of local energy. Knowing that we’d found the perfect space for our new location, we asked Chris to make an offer; a few months later the space was leased.
With a space leased and the clock ticking, we engaged a great San Francisco Architect to design our dream space. Come back next week for more details!