Shared office space will help new Merced companies grow, innovate

A new venture in Merced called Vault Works will soon offer a shared workspace to fledgling companies and other groups.

The building already has more applications than it has room for tenants, and it will look to places like Bay Area collaborative offices as examples of how to be successful.

The Vault Works building at 1666 N St. was once Westamerica Bank and is undergoing renovations, but tenants of the office space and area business people gathered for a “soft opening” ceremony on Thursday. The building gets its name from a vault near the back of the office.

Dan Alcorn, a program coordinator with Sama USA, is a member of the board of directors for the new venture. He and several others at the opening stressed the collaboration they hope to see in the shared office.

“It’s a blank space for what’s about to happen,” Alcorn said.

The 4,000-square-foot building will offer several offices for rent, most likely by new companies, nonprofits or employees working a distance from their main offices. They will share a conference room, kitchen, bathrooms and other space.

Another board member, Steve Roussos, the interim executive director of UC Merced Blum Center, also touted the potential for collaboration between companies and nonprofits. The office could also nurture new firms.

“Regular people trying to launch a business need an easier place to do it,” he said.

Designers of Merced’s office said they visited shared spaces in Oakland, Berkeley and other cities that have been successful and innovative in their ventures.

Vault Works will have a relationship with the UC Merced Small Business Development Center and the UC Merced Venture Lab, a business incubator that is a joint effort between the university and the city of Merced.

Peter Schuerman, associate vice chancellor for research and economic development, said he looks forward to building a relationship between Vault Works and the 5,951-square-foot Venture Lab, a center for entrepreneurs that provides small-business development services.

“Efforts like this are very complementary to what we’re trying to do with the UC Merced Venture Lab,” he said.

Big things could come out of those two hubs of innovation, but Schuerman stressed that Merced residents should not expect miracles.

Along with Sama USA, a company that teaches its students to be freelancers online, Vault Works tenants include one office housing an employee from Southern California-based software company GoGuardian and another that is home to Merced nonprofit BEAT – Biology Engineering Agriculture Technology.

Steven Duval Ruilova, the chief executive officer for BEAT, said it made sense for his growing educational nonprofit to join the collective office space. “We’re all about collaboration,” he said.

When a bunch of young self-starters begin working around each other, he said, there’s a potential for innovation.

Merced Main Street Association President Daniel Kazakos, another member of Vault’s board, said he believes the shared space could become a job-making machine that could be an example for other cities in the region.

“I’d love to see this thing start here in Merced and venture out into the county,” he said.

This story was originally published April 24, 2015 at 7:18 PM with the headline "Shared office space will help new Merced companies grow, innovate."