Eric Dalski, builder of green rooftops and walls, at Green Spaces, a co-working space in TriBeCa.
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
Published: February 14, 201
Hunched over their computers on a recent afternoon, two brothers were sketching plans to build a green roof for an elementary school in Brooklyn. One row and three desks away, a woman was working on an environmentally friendly fashion project, a little black dress that can be worn 365 ways.
Nearby, an information technology consultant was briefing a client on how cloud computing could save her money while also saving the environment. And in a corner toward the end of the long room of desks and chairs, a young man was surrounded by stacks of jeans mailed in to his company for repair and reuse.
These are the offices of Green Spaces, a co-working space in TriBeCa that is home to environmentally focused start-up companies. Since it opened in September, it has attracted about 20 “ecopreneurs,” as the office’s founder, Jennie Nevin, calls them.
“The green movement is about collaborating and working together,” Ms. Nevin said. “The idea here is to create a hub.”
Across the country, other co-working spaces are trying to go green by recycling, composting and shifting to renewable sources of energy. But some, like Green Spaces, go further, branding themselves as the office space of choice for small environmental ventures.
Ms. Nevin, who has two partners, opened a branch of Green Spaces in Denver in September and plans to expand to Los Angeles as well.
In Brooklyn’s Dumbo section, a similar space called Green Desk, whose electricity relies entirely on wind power and which offers amenities like recycled furniture, has also attracted entrepreneurs in environmental fields.
After filling more than 80 desks, Green Desk expanded from one floor to four, reaching capacity at 500 desks. It then opened a second location nearby, with an additional 150 desks. It will soon install solar panels, offer loaner bicycles, build a rooftop garden and open a space where its tenants and other eco-conscious retailers can sell their merchandise, said Uri Zucker, the office manager.
Green Desk was envisioned by the Brooklyn developer Jack Guttman, who plans to open two more locations on properties that he owns in Downtown Brooklyn and in Williamsburg.
The rent charged is comparable to that of other co-working outfits, tenants said. At Green Desk, a single desk starts at $299 a month. At Green Spaces, a desk is $550 a month.
While it is hard to pin down how many green-themed working spaces exist across the nation, they seem to share a common demographic. Most of the people they attract are young professionals who believe that a cooperative ethos is crucial to the green business movement, notwithstanding an equal embrace of financial savvy and a competitive spirit.
Ms. Nevin is 31, and her partners are 28 and 29. Many of their tenants are in their 20s.
“This is about a different way of doing business,” said Ms. Nevin, who previously worked as an investment specialist for Merrill Lynch and said she was always passionate about the environment.
“It’s certainly different from Wall Street, where it was all about what you did,” she said. “This is all about what we can do.”
Jeff Kaplan, 30, the founder of New Living, a co-working space for green professionals above his home-furnishings store by the same name in Houston, echoed her sentiments.
“Of course, if the business can’t make a profit, then it’s not sustainable,” Mr. Kaplan said. “We have to be profitable, but this is also about sharing resources and ideas. The movement is so new that we need to learn together.”
His space is home to a green event planner, a sustainable construction firm and an environmentally friendly cleaning service, among other businesses. The ventures tend to share clients and, when possible, work jointly on projects.
New Living is flooded with requests for internships from students and new graduates and does its best to accommodate them, Mr. Kaplan said. Most are unpaid. “There are so many people that want green jobs,” he said. “One of our businesses has 10 interns.”
At Green Spaces, Ms. Nevin is looking for financial sponsors to help cover intern salaries for high school and college students. Last semester, she raised enough to support one student from Columbia University and another from Harlem Renaissance High School.
The rest — from 5 to 10 — work at no charge, and she tries to rotate them among the start-up businesses so they can be exposed to as many environmental avenues as possible.
Some of the internships have turned into jobs: One of her partners and the space’s chief operations officer started out as interns, as did an employee of Denim Therapy, the jeans repair business.
Basing a company at an environmental co-working space can give an entrepreneur added credibility, said Abraham Slavi, who publishes “Our Green Book,” a directory of green businesses, out of his office at Green Desk.
“It was a place we were proud of, that we could be proud to invite visitors to,” he said.
At both Green Desk and Green Spaces, plants are everywhere, the sunlight streams in, and everyone washes his or her own coffee cups.
On a recent morning at Green Spaces, Eric and Mark Dalski, the brothers who build green rooftops and green walls, were placing about 30 small plants into felt inserts on a panel they had mounted on a wall. They plan to grow the plants hydroponically, with nutrient-enriched water and no soil.
The wall is a test bed for a client who wants a green wall installed in his home on the Upper West Side. The brothers will experiment with different amounts of nutrients and varieties of plants.
“Certainly this would be harder to do elsewhere,” Eric Dalski said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 19, 2010
An article on Monday about environmentally focused start-up companies sharing green “co-working” spaces misstated the rental fee charged by Green Desk, one such venture, whose fee was compared with the cost of Green Spaces, another start-up company. While Green Spaces charges $550 for a single desk with 24-hour access, Green Desk charges $299 — not $199 — for comparable space and access.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:21AM 
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