The Coven’s Colorful Coworking Space Caters to an Inclusive Community

“When women, nonbinary and transgender folks gather together, they create magic.” That’s the motto behind the aptly named Coven, a coworking concept in Minnesota that caters specifically to this demographic.

The Minneapolis-based company, which opened its first space in downtown Minneapolis on March 8, 2018 — International Women’s Day — has now expanded in the Twin Cities with a second location in nearby Saint Paul that opened in January of this year.

The Coven’s four female co-founders all had careers in the advertising industry, where they often noticed a lack of diversity when it came to gender, age and race at industry events.

“We had come together [from our different agencies] to work on initiatives that focused on creating more gender and racial equity within the advertising and creative fields,” says Erinn Farrell, co-founder and chief creative officer at The Coven. “We got to a point where we started realizing the change we were hoping to shepherd might not be easy to do within that industry. That’s how the idea for the Coven was born — we were inspired by some of the female-forward spaces we had seen open across the country, and we started envisioning a space that could hold possibilities for women and be a physical and psychological safe space for them to explore opportunities.”

After gathering a group of women, nonbinary and transgender people across the Twin Cities, hosting dinners out of Farrell’s home to build community among potential members, and crowdsourcing $350,000 online for the project, The Coven signed on 150 founding members and was ready to open its first space in Minneapolis.

Today, The Coven has around 1,000 members across both of its locations.

Members have a choice of myriad workspaces and amenities at the Saint Paul Coven location, which spans 9,000 square feet. Members enter a large central coffee-shop-style gathering area on the first floor, with lounge space that can be used for individual work or utilized for events or small meetings. The floor also includes a kitchen and pantry for event catering.

“The main level is a ‘see and be seen’ space. So many women in the area that are somehow making an impact in the community are members, and it acts as a social club,” says Betsy Vohs, founder and CEO of Studio BV, a Minneapolis-based architecture firm that led the design of the Saint Paul venue. “That’s why we really wanted this first impression space to be a knockout. We wanted people to walk in and just really get [the mission], that this is a place for women, this is a place of inspiration and this is a place of joy.”

The idea of “evoking joy” was the underlying design ethos for both spaces, says Farrell. “We wanted it to feel like a modern art museum but one where you could put your feet up,” she says.

The coworking space features vibrant décor, like a hot pink linoleum floor which Vohs says became a canvas for the rest of the design, mid-century furniture pieces, and colorful art sourced from local female businesses in the Twin Cities. Blending the past and present, the design team also restored historic details in the century-old building, including crown molding, archways and original exposed brick and limestone walls.

The art and materials that adorn The Coven’s space are all sourced from local artisans and businesses, which fosters a connection to the surrounding community, represents diverse experiences and visually brings The Coven’s mission to life.

“There is a specific, targeted clientele that The Coven serves, and in that way it’s extremely expressive, and we intentionally made this space a canvas for art and expression. It’s a rally call — a physical space where you can feel the energy of women having progressive conversations around entrepreneurship, community engagement and being female leaders,” says Vohs. “Design at its best can be a physical representation of ideas, and this space does the best it can to represent The Coven’s ethos and create a place for ideas, community and women.”

Simple design features, like a plywood coffee bar, allow contrast for these art pieces to shine.

"You can go to any coworking space. But this one is different. It’s about ideas and community."

Betsy Vohs, Studio BV

A custom tile installation inside the arch behind the coffee bar conveys one of The Coven’s other mantras, “Do the Most Good.”

“It’s like a tattoo on the space, a call to arms of what The Coven is trying to do,” says Vohs, noting how much the team embraced the vibrant design aesthetic within the space. “This design is not for everyone, it’s specifically for The Coven, and we didn’t shy away from their mission in the design, we really went for it. I think that’s why it works so well.”

The Coven founders also wanted all its members and potential members to feel at home in its space. “We want to ensure that anyone who walks through the door feels seen, celebrated and acknowledged regardless of their age, lived experience, cultural background or gender identity,” says Farrell. “We collaborated with local artists and authors to ensure that folks’ stories are being brought to life in the art on our walls and books on our shelves, and there is nothing more special than when someone comes in with a different lived experience than my own and sees something that evokes a specific positive memory for them or joyful feeling. That’s driven the design of both spaces.”

The location also offers a dedicated childcare space for working parents, and a “Parents and Prayer” room for nursing mothers or members who have a daily religious or meditation practice.

The lower level is more attune to focused work with individual desks and tables, conference rooms of differing sizes and private phone booths for calls, named after iconic female figures in history.

Female-centric self-care amenities are also a priority at The Coven. The space provides showers along with pampering products like lotion or shampoo for all skin and hair types.

“We know as women we carry so much and the work in our lives is hard, and hopefully walking in to The Coven offers a respite, and that you can know in equal parts that you’re still doing hard work but feel joyful within the space while doing it,” says Farrell.

Aiming to represent socioeconomic diversity in its membership as well, the company offers a “Community Funded” membership category for individuals from underserved communities that might not be able to afford it on their own. For every five memberships purchased, the company grants another, selecting a candidate through an application process.

Therefore, the location of its facilities was also an important factor. “The accessibility of the spaces was really important to us because we needed to be near public transit and accessible for those that might not have a car,” Farrell explains. “The exterior of the building needed to be well-lit so that members walking to a bus or rail station in the dark felt safe the entire time.”

Both of The Coven’s locations are in historic buildings from the 1800’s — the 4,500-square-foot Minneapolis location is housed in a standalone brownstone building downtown, while the founders chose a historic Richardsonian Romanesque building for the Saint Paul location.

“They both have a great feminist history, which is part of the reason we were so attracted to them. Older buildings host all sorts of interesting build-out challenges and they’re not the least expensive option, but there is something really powerful about creating new futures and new opportunities in spaces that already existed,” says Farrell.

The Coven’s ground-floor suite in the Saint Paul building sat vacant for years prior to the company taking it over, and the renovation also involved combining several distinct areas into one cohesive space. The room is flooded with natural light, one of the key considerations for the founders when looking for space. Creating an expansive open layout on the main floor helped allow sunlight to shine through the entire room.

“The Coven was the perfect user — it would have been almost impossible to break down the spaces because the daylight is shoehorned at the end,” says Vohs. “So to create a lot of small spaces for a traditional office user would have been really challenging, and The Coven’s open space that could embrace large expanses of light and have it penetrate deep into the space was the best use of the architecture.”

The main open lounge and coffee space was also reflective of the way the concept was growing in the Twin Cities.

“In the past few years, The Coven has really become a leader in the community, and they wanted their space to be a different kind of tool and resource for the community [beyond providing workspace],” says Vohs. “One of the program requirements for the move was to create a space where they could have large gatherings, so this space was really perfect because it was inherently set up for that.”

While the main floor may have been conducive to what The Coven was trying to accomplish with its second location, the lower level wasn’t.

“The downstairs was like a cave. We had to think about how to make it a place where people actually wanted to hang out,” says Vohs of the lower floor. It is now where individual work desks, phone booths and conference rooms are arranged. The lower level also isn’t well-lit, with the only natural light coming from a street-level skylight at one end.

“Old buildings are great, but they are also monsters. We tried to bring the same level of brightness and whimsy as there was upstairs to the lower level, so it didn’t feel like you were in a basement,” adds Vohs. “I think embracing it to create a coziness and brighten up the space created equity between the two levels.”

Working with a historic building was challenging, as the designers wanted to honor and celebrate the original details of the space while still upgrading the design and making it modern in a way that reflected The Coven concept.

“We made a rule with the Saint Paul location that we would leave pieces of historical significance or original architecture that hadn’t been touched yet, as is,” says Farrell. “The lower level has all these gorgeous natural limestone walls so any of those that weren’t painted we left in their natural state.”

The lower level also features brick ceilings that are barrel-vaulted , which would typically have been sealed and painted over to avoid brick dust. “But they hadn’t been touched in 100 years, so we kept them as is. I think it’s what people inevitably love and adore about the space, all these special touches,” Farrell adds.

Though Vohs notes, it required a lot of restoration to stabilize the limestone walls and keep them from shedding, but they became a focal point of the design on the lower level.

“What’s attractive about the space but was, at the same time, a beast to deal with, is all these beautiful natural materials,” says Vohs. “We were trying to synthesize them all and make it a space that’s not chaotic. We had a really controlled color palette of the white walls, and every time we had a historic threshold, we painted it a metallic gold so we had these moments of change in the space that were unusual.”

The Coven closed both of its locations for a few months starting in March at the height of the coronavirus lockdowns, and have since slowly reopened in accordance with government regulations and with precautions in place.

The Coven offers regular classes, workshops, event programming, mentorship and more, which were all moved to digital and virtual platforms while the physical spaces were closed through June.

“Our goal as independent business owners and a female-forward space is to create physical and psychological safe spaces for our members to work, and in the prime of coronavirus that includes not just physical space, but virtual spaces too,” says Farrell.

The company rearranged the furniture to accommodate social distancing, and now all workspaces must be reserved, with bookings at a maximum of 50% capacity. Additionally, masks and temperature checks at the door are required, and The Coven has added social distancing markers, informational signs, hand sanitizer dispensers, cleaning supplies and more to its spaces.

While Farrell says that of course the energy of the collaborative space is different these days, the importance of building deep relationships and bonds between members and having a common goal of empowerment is what gives The Coven its strength, making it more than just a typical workspace.

“If I look back on when we started this venture, we started with building community and a membership base first prior to our space ever being open. What it taught us is that this was a concept people wanted to get behind and advocate to be a part of. There are so many great variations of coworking coming into different markets these days, but our community-first approach is an important differentiator for us,” says Farrell.

“As businesses take a hit right now, we have recognized that this power of community is so deeply important, and there is a really important, vital role for female-forward spaces willing to do the work around education of racial justice and more,” she adds. “We as women, in the broadest sense, deserve these spaces for ourselves because we recognize that folks from underestimated genders like women, nonbinary, and trans people are able to pursue new avenues of relationship, build economic empowerment, and create new opportunities for ourselves when we are given these spaces, in a way that a lot of other places in our lives don’t necessarily offer. We believe in the power of this community and what it can mean across the country.”