Groover Labs to house WSU ShiftSpace

Groover Labs has signed a lease to house WSU ShiftSpace at its 42,000-square-foot technology hub opening at Third and St. Francis in Wichita.

The collaboration is the first partnership for the nonprofit going up in the former Printing Inc. building.

“Groover Labs will be a space big enough to house people with big ideas — including artists, makers and entrepreneurs,” said co-founder Curt Gridley. “We are delighted to have ShiftSpace as our first partnership. Our longtime support of Wichita State University through the Gridley Family Foundation also makes this a fabulous fit.”

Part product development lab, coworking space, event hall, Groover Labs is a home base for new product development. Gridley and Hoover are investing more than $5 million in the nonprofit, which will offer several levels of membership and amenities including access to private offices, open desks, studio space and product development labs. An event space, classrooms and conference rooms will be available for public rental.

Groover Labs offers 14,000 square feet of makerspace featuring a PCB assembly and electronics shop, a 3-axis CNC machine, plasma cutters, 3D printers and a wood shop with a CNC routing table and more — plus people to help.

Students organize the exhibition schedule and programming for ShiftSpace, which the WSU Student Government Association funds. The WSU School of Art Design and Creative Industries (ADCI) oversees the galleries.

“ShiftSpace is a real-world learning environment for students,” said Kristin Beal, ADCI gallery manager. “We’re looking forward to engaging with the community from this new space.”

Gridley and his co-founder and wife, Tracy Hoover, seek to create a collaborative environment in an area becoming known as Downtown Wichita’s newest hot spot.

Groover Labs — think Gridley + Hoover — is next door to WAVE, a live music venue, bar and restaurant helping to enliven Wichita’s music scene.

“We love the area and the vision Curt and Tracy have for Groover Labs,” Beal said. “This move is going to open up all kinds of new opportunities for our students.”

Hutton is the contractor for the design build project.

Gridley + Hoover = Groover

Curt Gridley, a native Kansan, graduated from Wichita State University in 1980 and went on to earn a master’s degree from Dartmouth in 1983.

Meanwhile, Tracy Hoover, who grew up in New Jersey, graduated from Wellesley College in 1985.

With careers in software engineering, they met at a Fortran Language Standards Conference in 1986 in New Mexico and married in 1992. Tracy continued to work as a software engineer in the Boston area until 1997.

After spending some time working in the software industry, Curt knew the focus would turn toward making hardware faster and less expensive. In 1994, he founded a venture-backed hardware startup, Amber Wave Systems, which he successfully sold to USRobotics in 1996.

In 2000, Curt and Tracy established The Gridley Family Foundation, for which they have served as the sole trustees. Since inception, the foundation has contributed $2 million to charitable causes, more than $1 million of which went to WSU. Since moving back to Wichita in 2005, Curt has been on the boards of the WSU Foundation, MakeICT and the Ulrich Museum, while Tracy has been treasurer for a national musical organization, treasurer for MakeICT and on the music faculty at WSU.

Curt and Tracy have two children, Henry and Fiona.

Since moving to downtown Wichita in 2016, Curt and Tracy have become more attuned to changes occurring in the center of Wichita. They learned of the nearby and vacant Printing Inc. building in a casual conversation with a neighbor and began considering a purchase. With their technology and investment background, experience founding tech startups, connection to the local creative community and work as trustees of a private foundation, Curt and Tracy are in a unique position to successfully complete this project.

Downtown Wichita Construction Boom Continues, KNSS Radio

KNSS Radio covered the Wichita City Council’s vote to approve $4 million in industrial revenue bonds for Groover Labs.

The full story:

The Wichita City Council on Tuesday approved $4 million in industrial revenue bonds for Groover Labs.  It's a non-profit maker space and event center, intended to spur startup companies.  Those bonds will help renovate the former Printing Inc. building, a 45,000 square foot structure on the southeast corner of Third Street North and St. Francis.

The council also approved a memorandum of understanding with Douglas Market Development, LLC for the development of the Kansas Health Science Center.  The $75 million complex will also include student housing, a culinary school and a hotel.  The project with create 324 new jobs, with an average wage of $55,000.  The city and developer will negotiate the development agreement, which will be presented to the council within 120 days.  This project is expected to begin next year and open by August 2022.

The council deferred until next week an amendment to a lease with King of Freight LLC, who will move into the former Gander Mountain building at Waterwalk.

Have You Heard? by Carrie Rengers, Wichita Eagle

Carrie Rengers of The Wichita Eagle was first to break the news of our venture in her “Have You Heard?” column.

Carrie did a great job explaining what we’re up to here at Groover Labs and breaking down the details.

Here’s the full story:

Wichitan Curt Gridley says that when he used to live in the Boston area, he was immersed in a culture of emerging technologies and start-ups.

“This kind of stuff was in the air,” says the software and hardware engineer.

He says you could be checking out at the grocery store, and three of the five people in line might be starting a new technology company. It was sort of an instant opportunity for connection.

Gridley and his wife, software engineer Tracy Hoover, now hope to foster that kind of atmosphere in Wichita with their more than $5 million Groover Labs, a nonprofit they’re opening this fall in the former Printing Inc. building at Third and St. Francis just north of the Wave downtown.

“There’s a lot of cool things going on in Wichita that are in little silos and pockets,” Gridley says. “We started realizing it can’t get to a critical mass because there’s nowhere for it to come together.”

He says he thought others might be feeling the same and wanting a way “for those kind of activities to come together and feed off each other.”

So he and his wife — their two names combined make “Groover” — are starting “what you could simply call a technology hub,” he says.

It’s to “house all the various pieces that kind of relate to technology start-ups or start-ups in general.”

The focus will be on taking the necessary steps to create a prototype or product and take it to the marketplace.

“There’s a lot of really bright people doing creative things,” Gridley says. However, he says there’s “not a product mentality.”

“There’s just not the emphasis on people wanting to manufacture products or start companies.”

That’s where Groover Labs comes in, Hoover says.

“We want to really focus on product development and collaboration.”

‘HUGE DIFFERENCE’

The 44,000-square-foot former Printing Inc. building started as a much smaller space in the 1920s and grew through the 1980s with additions, some of which have some accessibility issues and some that are simply odd.

Gridley says there’s a two-story section with a balcony that “kind of looks like a 1970s motel.”

They’re tearing down a small portion of the building and extending it in another area.

Hutton is the contractor.

There will be 14,000 square feet for a maker lab, which will include studio rental space, a wood shop, a metal shop, an electronics lab and a fab lab with a laser cutter and a 3-D printer. There also will be equipment for people to manufacture small printed circuit boards, which will allow them to take a design from a computer and send it to a machine to produce it.

The key is it’s all in one space, Gridley says.

“If you can just walk across the room and have that available it makes a huge difference.”

There won’t be large-scale manufacturing at Groover Labs. It’s more about creating prototypes to then manufacture elsewhere.

There will be 5,000 square feet for studio space and about 2,000 square feet for two classrooms, which will be available for workshops and small focus groups.

There will be another 5,000 to 7,000 square feet of co-working space with small office spaces of 80 to 130 square feet. Gridley says the idea behind small spaces is to force people to occasionally get out of their offices and mingle with others.

Options for rentals include a dedicated office with a lock, a dedicated desk or come-and-go seats available at open tables like at a library.

Gridley and Hoover are still working on pricing, but there will be month-to-month memberships for much of the spaces.

There will be event space that does not require a monthly membership. Hoover says she envisions events focused on technology or business rather than general social gatherings. That could mean a coding school, software instruction or lunchtime seminars.

There’s a courtyard off the event space that will allow events to flow from the inside to the outside. There’s also an area there to build an addition if Groover Labs needs more room.

Hoover and Gridley are also in talks with someone about using 1,200 square feet for a gallery.

“We like the idea of mixing (it) up,” Gridley says.

Some but not all of these things are available at other maker spaces, Gridley and Hoover say.

MakeICT and GoCreate “definitely fill a niche in the community,” Hoover says.

She says Groover Labs isn’t about taking anything away from those places.

“We don’t want to feel like we’re competing,” Gridley says.

He says they want “to make this a win for Wichita and Kansas and not just for us.”

‘A BIT OF FRUSTRATION’

Hoover and Gridley were involved in a number of different start-ups in Boston, which is where the two met and married.

They sold one start-up — called Amber Wave Systems, which made ethernet switches — for $50 million.

“It turned out very well financially for us,” Gridley says.

It allowed them to start the Gridley Family Foundation.

When their children were young, they moved from Boston to Gridley’s home state of Kansas to be near family in 2005. Gridley says they figured they’d stay only a few years, but they decided to make it their home.

They became involved in philanthropy through their foundation, did some consulting and looked for ways to use and share their knowledge of technology.

“Most people were more interested in our money than our background, so there was a bit of frustration,” Gridley says.

The family’s foundation is now the financial backer for Groover Labs.

Though Gridley says his “fundamental drive and interest is in technology start-ups,” he is not a serial entrepreneur like some people.

He says he and Hoover want to leverage their experience in technology and starting companies by helping others learn about design, manufacturing and sales and marketing, which includes crowd funding and crowd sourcing.

The two will be unpaid co-executive directors at Groover Labs.

Staffing will help set their concept apart, they say.

While other places have volunteers — “some amazing people step up and volunteer,” Gridley says — Groover Labs will have full- and part-time employees and consistent hours.

“We think over time that will make a huge difference,” he says.

Maggie Koops, an aerospace engineering graduate who is completing her masters in innovation design, is the operations manager.

There will be two or three full-time employees initially and five to seven part-time ones.

“We would like to make this self-sustaining,” Gridley says.

He and Hoover hope to create a community around the building even before it opens with possible monthly get-togethers to share progress and build excitement.

The two moved to Old Town in 2016 and noticed how the area is expanding west with Wave, Nortons Brewery and Cocoa Dolce, which is moving its headquarters to Second and St. Francis.

“It seems like St. Francis is the next wave of excitement for Old Town,” Hoover says.

“We like the urban environment,” Gridley says. “We like old buildings.”

They say they also like meeting interesting people, and a maker lab is a way to do it.

“Maybe we’re twisted,” Gridley says, but that’s what “we find fun to do.”

“We’re building the place . . . we want to use.”