C&S Workspace and Community Center will close December 2024
TL;DR Code & Supply Co. remains active and will continue to hold events, build our online presence, and explore projects that improve the work and life of our software professional community. However, we’re winding down coworking and meeting operations at our Workspace, which will close to the public on December 1, 2024. See the end for key dates.
Friends and supporters of Code & Supply Co.,
We’ve decided to shut down Workspace, our software community-focused coworking and meeting space in operation since January 2017. While Workspace was among the handful of Pittsburgh coworking spaces to survive the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it did so because of its unique business model. That business model has proven unsustainable during the most recent tech job downturn, as interest in coworking is not returning commensurate with rising costs. We aimed to break even: to have a place where we and other groups could host meetups and build community. Alas, Workspace’s losses have exceeded what we can bear and what we project we could recoup in an upturn. While we’ve valued that money should not be an obstacle to participation in the software community, the harsh reality of our other value, that people deserve to be paid for their work, means we cannot continue. Moreover, we predict the sale of the building to a new owner is imminent. We believe a sustainable lease extension after that sale is unlikely.
We are proud to have built and operated this business without compromising our values.
A recent article we read lamented a culture that has molded “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success in business. In the end, the author says, “I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything ends is automatically ‘less than’ this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.” In sharing this online, one of our forebears in the Pittsburgh meetup community lamented the absence of a word in English to describe the feeling, but a concept in Japanese — “一期一会” (ichigo ichie) “conveys a sense of treasuring unrepeatable moments.”
Workspace is unique and special in so many ways. We’re proud to have created a line of business that we not only operated but were customers of. We built a coworking space that we wanted to use. We hosted hundreds of meetups, and not just C&S meetups. One month, we had 18 days with an event. We built a conference organizing office that was pivotal in the success of Abstractions II in 2019. We built a weird little computer museum. We built some art and some whimsey in our “log cabin” with shiny objects, reflective of geeks’ tendency to find inspiration when focusing on something else.
The times we had there belong to the thousands of people who have come to hundreds of events throughout our nearly eight years in operation on the third floor of 5648 Friendship Avenue. We gratuitously thank our other halves — Jackie Reese and Brigette Lefever — for their patience with us throughout the years. We thank our longest-term, multi-year resident tenants, who also helped us keep the place clean and stood in for us when we were unavailable: David Lu, Clarke Bacharach, Keith Callenberg, Christopher DeMarco, and Sarah Withee.
Remember, C&S isn’t going away, though. Our other operations will continue. Slack remains open, the Meetup will exist, and we’ll host them somewhere else in person and online, the Compensation Survey will eventually return, and maybe we might do another conference one day.
How can you help us keep serving the Pittsburgh software community?
We need a few reliable spaces to host Meetup events for 20–40 people, preferably for free or less than $100 per evening event rate. We especially love venues in Pittsburgh’s east end near the busway and have some parking nearby. Corporate offices and coworking spaces work well if adequate seating and a great projector and wall or screen are available.
We need your continued or additional financial support. While Workspace generates 90% of our revenue and accounts for around 85% of our expenses, our expected venue-related expenses in its absence will climb substantially. Now more than ever, we need your $5–$20/mo support. Join us at https://codeandsupply.co/join and change your membership level according to the value you believe C&S brings to your life.
Help us recoup some short-term losses by buying Workspace equipment when we put it up for sale, donating at https://paypal.me/codeandsupply, or dropping some cash into the donations box on the table at the next Workspace meetup you attend this year. You can also grab our merch for free or really cheaply at an event in the next several weeks, as we will not be able to store our inventory elsewhere.
If you want to “save the Workspace” and have access to a budget of tens of thousands of dollars per year, talk to us at sponsorship@codeandsupply.co. Our problems may be solvable with money.
Thank you for your patronage, and we’ll see you in the next chapter of Code & Supply.
— Colin Dean, Managing Director, and Justin Reese, Owner
Key dates for coworking members
- October 1 — Initial notice
- November 1 — All active coworking subscriptions canceled, no new coworking memberships accepted.
- November 15 — Earliest date starting fixtures sale
- December 1 — Key return deadline, Workspace closed to members unless assisting with move-out or fixtures sale
Keys may be dropped off in person per https://codeandsupply.co/workspace#offboarding or mail via certified/tracked mail to Code & Supply Co., 5648 Friendship Ave Fl. 3, Pittsburgh, PA 15206. Members failing to return keys by December 5 will be charged a $50 fee per key.
