Ottawa’s NGOs are moving into 251 Bank St. as part of the Under One Roof initiative.
When the doors of 251 Bank St. re-open on March 1, the Centretown community will have access to an eco-friendly, creative and collaborative office space.
Diane Touchette, director of operations at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, began the Under One Roof initiative more than three years ago.
Touchette’s dream of bringing Ottawa’s non-governmental organizations together to share resources and ideas is finally coming true.
“It feels wonderful knowing that we’ll be contributing to the downtown community in Ottawa,” she says. “We’re very proud.”
The 30,000-square-foot building will house meeting rooms, kitchen facilities, lounges, a volunteer centre, a yoga room and showers, as well as a media room where tenants can create videos and podcasts to upload to their websites.
NGOs will be able to minimize operating costs by sharing administration, Internet and phone services, as well as printing and mail costs.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Canadian Health Coalition, Octopus Books, an independent bookstore, and rabble.ca, a non-profit news site, are some of the tenants expected to move into 251 Bank St. by the end of the summer.
Touchette says that beyond the obvious benefits of saving money, collaboration is key to the Under One Roof mandate. She adds that it won’t just be tenants benefiting from the dialogue between multiple organizations.
“We plan on having a lunch-hour speaker series that will be open to the public. We want to do a lot of educating. We even want to do poetry readings, a dance recital. The possibilities are endless,” she says. “We really want to animate the space and have the community involved and welcome to come in.”
Members of the community will be able to book boardrooms for meetings, and desks will be available to rent for short-term projects.
Canada Without Poverty has signed a lease for space in the new building and is scheduled to move in March 1, says executive director Rob Rainer.
“The main benefit is the cross fertilization of ideas and inspiration that happens between organizations when they are housed together,” he says.
“There will be some cost and administration-type savings, and that’s nothing to ignore, but no question, the overwhelming benefit is the collaborative opportunities that will arise from this.”
Agathe Gramet-Kedzior, acting executive director of Canadians for Choice, says the group is hoping to sign a lease for a space inthe new building over the next two weeks.
Gramet-Kedzior says they are very interested in the Under One Roof philosophy.
Canadians for Choice works alone in a small office and Gramet-Kedzior says the employees feel very isolated from other NGOs.
Gramet-Kedzior explains that while cutting costs is the biggest benefit of the move, the organization is also excited for the possibilities of collaboration.
“Working in a space that is communal and where people share similar visions of the kind of change they want to see happen in our society – I think that’s really inspiring and motivating,” she says.