Who's At Commonplace?

We're so lucky to have an amazing group of nonprofits and community-focused businesses which use our two spaces. Some have a full office, some just pop in when they need a space to feel productive, connected, and welcomed. And we have new and interesting folks dropping by every day to make use of our conference rooms and day pass coworking!

Sign up for our monthly community newsletter to hear more about what’s happening with our members!

Below is a list of most of our Commonplacers. (Note: We update this monthly.)

The Box

• Commongrounds

• Frost Family Partnership

• Lean Focus

• Life Integrated Coaching

• MCM Staffing

• Presbyterian Peace Fellowship

• Render & Rise

• Ryan Scott

• Square Roots

• The Nature Conservancy

• Note: We currently have several office and dedicated desks available at this location.

Commongrounds

• Anavery Fine Foods

• Attain

• Building Bridges w/ Music

• Commongrounds

• Crosshatch

• Goodwill Street Outreach

• Habitat for Humanity

• Mission North

• Northern Initiatives

• Nobo Market

• NWMI Arts & Culture Network

• Parallel Solutions

• Riley’s Candles

• Statecraft

• Taste The Local Difference

• The Alluvion

• The Boardman Review

• The Ticker

• Tusen Takk Foundation

• Venture North

Anavery Fine Foods

Anavery Fine Foods raises heritage breed animals in a healthy setting to provide your family with the best tasting meat, poultry and eggs. We practice ethical animal husbandry and regenerative agriculture so you can feel good about what you buy.  Anavery is brought to you by The Weinrich Farm in Traverse City, Michigan.

Attain

Attain is a leading management, technology, and strategy consulting firm comprised of innovative problem solvers. We are more than just consultants—we’re trusted advisors and partners dedicated to helping you execute your vision and mission with purpose to achieve remarkable results.

Building Bridges w/ Music

Building Bridges with Music is passionate about bringing live music and a powerful and engaging message promoting respect and understanding to people of all ages. Our dynamic musicians are very entertaining and represent a variety of cultures, generations and genders. We share very compelling personal stories about how bullying, disrespect and prejudice have affected our lives.

Commongrounds

Commongrounds is a real estate cooperative in Traverse City, with a goal to develop real estate that meets community needs and increases quality of life in the region. Our pilot project is 414 E. Eighth Street, a 4-story mixed-use building. More than a building project, Commongrounds will be a backbone support for space and activities integrating wellness, arts, family, and food to help people and organizations be healthy, connected, creative, and inclusive.

Crosshatch

Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology envisions communities that are grounded in place: where people connect through stories, music, art, shared work, and food, and where the economy and culture are rooted in restoration of the earth and its people. Crosshatch builds strong communities through the intersections of art, farming, ecology and economy. (Formerly Institute for Sustainable Living, Art & Natural Design; ISLAND)

Frost Family Partnership

The Frost Family Partnership (FFP) owns and manages 28 rental units in and around the area. They define their business as community-focused real estate development and property management and are committed to running it as such. Rather than renting out each unit at the highest price the market will bear, less than a quarter of our units are just short of higher-income wage earners. These help pay for the entire portfolio, which helps keep rents down on the majority of our properties.

Life Integrated Coaching

Life Integrated Coaching uses the psychometric tools of Emergenetics to put a scientific lens on how your genetic blueprint and life experiences influence your natural way of thinking and behaving. They offer consultations, workplace coaching, workshops, and ongoing support for those interested in discovering more about their own unique approaches to life and learning.

Lean Focus

When you look at the Lean Focus team, you won’t find career consultants. You’ll find former leaders of Fortune-500 companies. Veteran talent solutions professionals who know what true Lean talent looks like. Senior-level Lean practitioners who’ve led successful business transformations in just about every industry. You’ll find everything it takes to build a high-performance culture that delivers sustained, profitable growth.

Goodwill- Street Outreach Team

Street Outreach meets people experiencing unsheltered homelessness where they are, and offers resources that can help people end their homelessness. Along with our partners in the Coalition to End Homelessness, we’re working toward a community where everyone has a safe and secure home. Together, we can make homelessness a rare, brief, and one-time experience.

Learn More

Habitat for Humanity

The Habitat program is a hand-up to a permanent housing solution for people who want to help themselves. Habitat homeowners have a real sense of ownership for both their homes and their new neighborhoods. Our ReStore directly supports our work. In addition to reducing waste going into landfills, donations and purchases help build homes for working families in our community.

MCM Staffing

MCM Staffing is an award-winning recruiting firm that specializes in qualifying candidates for job placement by screening for more than skills, building candidate rapport and establishing a rich referral network within the community. We provide value to our customers by developing answers to their staffing needs; to our associates with accessibility and prompt payment; to our candidates with direct feedback to guide them in their career options; and to our internal staff members through a rewarding experience.

Mission North, LLC

Mission North began in 2003 offering planning and economic development services to municipalities and downtown organizations.  In late 2017, we set out to establish Mission North as a premier consultant for downtown organizations, cities, and those who develop in them.  With a focus on placemaking, mobility expertise, and sustainable economics, Mission North is driven by a passion for places of quality and value.

Northern Initiatives

Northern Initiatives provides loans to small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs in Michigan that might not qualify for a small business loan from traditional banks for various reasons. Northern Initiatives offers access to capital at reasonable rates to those who would never have the chance or who would have entered business undercapitalized.

Nobo Market

NoBo Mrkt is a collaborative cafe and beverage bar offering specialty coffee, local beer and wine, creative handcrafted cocktails and free-spirited beverages, and carefully curated local food items with a focus on providing an exemplary guest experience. We are located on the main floor of Commongrounds, a real estate cooperative on 8th Street in Traverse City, Michigan.

NWMI Arts & Culture Network

The Northwest Michigan Arts & Culture Network is an arts and cultural services organization dedicated to connecting, promoting and supporting the individuals, organizations and creative projects that create and further arts and culture in Northern Lower Michigan. The Network serves as a convener, connector and advocate. Our goal is to help arts and culture thrive!

Parallel Solutions

Parallel Solutions is rooted in Traverse City, Michigan and primarily serves people and places in the Great Lakes region. We help guide strategic planning and action; provide professional and organizational development coaching, advice, and training; help clients plan for and manage changes in leadership, funding, programs, partnerships, and systems; and support collaborative efforts within teams and networks, including inter-jurisdictional and public-private partnerships

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship imagines a world of peace where all God’s creation can thrive. In local and global communities, we will use every nonviolent means to disrupt and transform the culture of domination that normalizes racism, ecocide, militarization, and war.  We build peace through the abolition of structural violence and by living into alternatives to violence with creativity, intelligence, imagination, and love.

Render & Rise

Render & Rise, the food-focused offshoot of Phase 4 Media, was founded in 2021 by award-winning filmmaker, Sarah Hesterman. Sarah has been producing content for brands, global creative agencies, production companies, foundations and non-profits for over 15 years. Our style of storytelling is rooted in documentary film, always in search of authenticity and ways to allow folks to tell their own story in their own words.  We pair that with beautiful images, elevated production value and a story arc that drives a call to action, to create original, quality, content that will engage, inform and inspire.

Riley’s Candles

We're not in the candle business. We're in the dog saving business. We're on a mission to save as many dogs' lives as possible. Riley is our founder, Chief Beagle Officer, and currently a 13-year-old rescue beagle. When Riley was 3, he was paralyzed and his newly married parents and couldn’t afford the surgery cost to save his life. In desperation, the charges were spread over every credit card they had available. Many animals are not so fortunate and must be put down. Riley decided he had to do whatever he could to change this, so in 2017 he founded Riley’s Candles! Per Riley’s instructions a portion of all proceeds raised by the sale of his candles and 100% of all donations will go directly to save pets in this situation.

Ryan Scott

For over 18 years I’ve helped brands build awareness and grow audiences by ideating, creating videos and executing creative strategies. My job purpose is to be a big picture creative thinker, video producer, strong writer, and presenter who adds value to teams by transforming data and insights into ideas that drive business results. I believe in a healthy work/life balance, spending my free time outdoors hiking and taking photos. I’m fueled by a passion for connecting brands with people to help them solve problems and live better lives.

Square Roots

Our mission: To responsibly bring our locally grown food to people in cities around the world, all year round. Greens should be good for all of us. Farmers, food lovers, and the planet itself. So instead of shipping fresh food halfway across the world (like most food is today), we bring farms closer to people. We’re guided by technology. We grow with love. And we want to make delicious, locally grown food a possibility for people everywhere.

Statecraft

Statecraft works with communities and/or organizations who have a plan but need consistent backbone support to make it happen. By “backbone” support, we mean working with you in an ongoing capacity as part of your team, assisting your board, organization, or collaborative with project management, meeting facilitation, budgeting, partnership and fund development, grant writing, and communication activities. This work requires a little bit of everything, never gets old, and we absolutely delight in it.

Taste The Local Difference

Taste the Local Difference® is Michigan’s local food consulting, media and marketing agency. Our work is diverse, but has one common goal – to sell more Michigan grown and produced food across the state. We are a woman-owned and woman-led business, specializing in communication strategy for purpose-driven food brands across the state of Michigan. We are passionate about education, building relationships and empowering entrepreneurs.

The Alluvion

The Alluvion is a 150-seat music venue and event space located on the second floor of The Common Grounds Cooperative building at the edge of The Boardman River near downtown Traverse City. This intimate, creative space is designed with optimal acoustics and world-class equipment. It is dedicated to producing high-quality, highly-accessible performances, community events, classes, workshops, and so much more. The Alluvion is co-owned by three partners: Commongrounds Cooperative, Jeff Haas, and Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology.

The Boardman Review

The Boardman Review is Northern Michiagn’s quarterly creative culture and outdoor lifestyle journal, and is co-produced by the Loud Brothers. Nick is a filmmaker and photographer who has spent several years in Los Angeles producing, shooting, and editing multiple short and feature documentaries. Chris has several years experience as a writer and producer for TV and digital series.

The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy is a global environmental nonprofit working to create a world where people and nature can thrive. Our mission is to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends. Guided by science and equity, we find paths to solve climate change and biodiversity loss. We’re determined to make a major difference by 2030.

The Ticker

The Ticker is Traverse City’s go-to digital source for local news and insider information. A multimedia news and events service, we deliver a free daily news email to more than 40,000 subscribers, and maintain a website that features up-to-the-minute news, events, community information, homes for sale, classifieds, movie times, and much more. The Ticker was launched in 2009 and is owned by Eyes Only Media, which also produces the Traverse City Business News, the Northern Express and other publications.

Tusen Takk Foundation

Named for an expression of thankfulness, the Tusen Takk Foundation nourishes artists by giving them a place to work, engagement opportunities to enrich the culture of Northwest Michigan, and a platform to share their work internationally. To share the beauty of Tusen Takk with artists, in the form of a time and a place to create, and to connect them with audiences worldwide, sharing their efforts to make the intangible tangible.

Venture North

Venture North has helped more than 1,500 small businesses in northwest Michigan through affordable loans and small business consulting. The measure of Venture North is reflected by the success of our clients and the willingness of agencies and philanthropy to support our work.  Our history is their story. Let’s work together to create even more great stories in northwest Michigan!

On The Importance Of Waffles

[Editor’s Note: Our very capable communications consultant told us we should start blogging. It will no doubt gall her, and perhaps rightfully so, that this post will rank better in search results for breakfast than for coworking. Sorry, Erin.]

[Editors’s Other Note: This nucleus for this blog was a recent email to a trusted colleague. We zhuzhed it up a little for your enjoyment and perhaps edification. Thanks for reading.]

Morning XXXX,

I'm sorry you couldn't join us for our first All-Commonplacer Breakfast on Tuesday. It was really something and you were missed! I've been reflecting on the event and I'm still struggling to fully convey my feelings on it. Relief, gratitude, excitement, motivation, obligation. You know, probably far better than I, what a simple thing it is to give people food, and what a hard thing it is to feed them.

Lauren and I spent the night before excitedly preparing. (Well I was excited, she was graciously willing, but tired. Being very pregnant will do that, I'm told.) I mistakenly made a cardinal sin and bought a bottle of low-fat milk. So I tried to think extra heavy thoughts during the mixing. We made (too much) waffle batter and filled our largest mason jar. Then we cooked down blueberries into compote, a new experience for me.  Our small kitchen smelled sweetly of simmering fruit and zested lemons. We may have also added some permanent berry juice stains to our lightly finished counter.

Here's what little was communicated to people ahead of time about the morning: 

Tuesday, Nov 29, from 830-1030am, we're hosting an all-Commonplacer orientation and planning breakfast at our new space in the Commongrounds building. We'll introduce and orient everyone to the new building and then facilitator extraordinaire Megan Motil will lead us in some group activities to help us (re)co-create the norms for our Commonplace culture in both spaces.

The exact nature of the aforementioned breakfast was also hinted at in our member newsletter, but as one Commonplacer later told me, "Oh, I thought you were just kidding about the waffles."

You never know if anyone will actually show up. And then of course the success of a thing is largely dependent on who shows up. It's what's in the attending heads--and their accompanying hearts--that matters more than the actual headcount.

“Movements are born of critical connections not critical mass.” - Grace Lee Boggs

Around 8:37, people started to trickle in (not that I was counting or anything). I saw the uncertainty on folk's faces. Would they be the only ones? Would this be a sad, awkward affair where they had to make small talk with four other people, while trying not to check their phones for an excuse to escape early? Internally, I echoed their concerns.

But I should have had faith. In short order, the room filled out. Almost to bursting in fact. I had to run around and grab extra chairs from across the street and wheel in an extra table. The aroma of baking waffles wafted from the room. You could smell it as soon as you stepped onto the third floor. You could also hear the sounds of conversation and frivolity. People greeting one another. Old friends and curious new colleagues.

You could tell it wasn't just breakfast folks were hungry for. Carbs only get you so far. They wanted connection. They wanted belonging. To see others and, in kind, to be seen.

In retrospect I should have brought a bell. Initially it was tough for Megan to cut through the animated conversations and laughter. Which of course is exactly the kind of problem you hope to have. But eventually, we got down to it.

Megan led the room though a series of contemplative exercises around the values they expect to see made manifest in Commonplace. She did this through a values paring exercise which built from individual contemplation, to one-on-one discussions, to table wide conversation, and finally to a room-wide dialogue.

Most Commonplacers appeared (not shockingly). aligned on a few core concepts:

• Cooperative decision-making about space, uses, and design rather than topdown or directive decision-making about space, uses, and design.

• Openness and tolerance for change rather than rigidity or intolerance to change.

• Inclusive membership rather than selective membership, with a desired shared for mission-alignment to be considered.

• Feeling of connection rather than separateness.

• Welcoming rather than exclusive.

• Community or systems-focused mission rather than an inwardly, organizationally, or building/space-focused mission.
  

And they also wrestled with seemingly opposing values. Becky ran around busing plates and I refilled coffee as our Commonplacers worked to articulate a balance between:

• Informal management system with flexible/fluid roles and responsibilities and an organized management system with defined roles and responsibilities. A desire for a defined decision-making process with clear roles was shared.

• Collaborative work and solitary work.

• Design that nurtures individual focus and productivity and informal actions and flexibility.

• Affordable and upscale member amenities, with a recognition that this is interconnected with a desire for community inclusivity.

Even allowing space for individual preference, the group sentiment was clear: Commonplacers want a space which is welcoming and which promotes collaboration while reinforcing healthy boundaries and norms around individual efforts. 

Now, you and I both know that giving voice to things and effectively operationalizing them are two totally different jars of jam. So begins (again) the really hard work.

How we continue to better operate in the fullness of this expectation remains to be seen. But it will be the subject of many hours of meditation and discussion for my self and those who support Commonplace. More on that soon.

(It was also clear that not everyone who made it into the room was at the table. I could certainly use your guidance on how to incorporate even more of our members into helping shape our culture and guide the development of our organization.)

I want to go back to waffles. Because they feature prominently, perhaps the most prominently, in the success of our recent event. Great credit is due to Megan for her facilitation skills, and even more credit to everyone who showed up and shared selflessly.

But the waffles, man, the waffles. And they weren't even that good of waffles. But they were our waffles, which we made by hand for our members. And that matters.

“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”
– Harriet Van Horne

A bag of expertly prepared Bubbies Bagles is calorically similar to a box of mass-produced Dunkin Donuts. But everyone would agree they are very different. And I think there's as much of a chasm between those two foods as there is between a well-catered event breakfast and our homemade waffles.

A fresh meal prepared by hand is a sign of generosity, respect and love. And it’s a commitment. Not necessarily a commitment to quality of result (as we clearly demonstrated with our well-intentioned, wrong-milk waffles) but a commitment of effort and intention. It’s the old adage “show me, don’t tell me” made manifest with butter, syrup and a little blueberry compote.

And I don't say any of this to be self aggrandizing. But it is crazy to me how easy it is for anyone to do this. It costs less and takes roughly the same amount of time as ordering a spread and laying it all out.

It's a really big, small thing. I hope If we continue to cook for our members then others will in time follow suit.

Because after all, what’s a day without waffles?

Thanks for reading through this whole damn thing. See you soon!

-n