Community members counted down from 10 as TJ Taylor, wielding a comically large pair of scissors, officially opened the Hub, a new space for small businesses. Taylor, the executive director of the ICELab at Western Colorado University, has been pursuing the missing piece of the puzzle for businesses in the valley for the past 2 years.
“This is our attempt to solve that and build a place where companies can not only exist, but grow,” said Taylor. The Hub is a 9,000 square foot warehouse containing office spaces, but more importantly, production space. Businesses are able to rent out however much space they need, whether that’s 100 square feet or 1,000.
“I would call this a giant spark to the economy of Gunnison County,” said Noah Eckhouse, chairman of the ICELab advisory board and vice president of the Tourism and Prosperity Partnership. The goal of the Hub is to help newer companies get a foothold by creating the workspaces that they need to flourish, and hopefully create more jobs in the county.
“We want to actually have them bring money from outside the county and have it circulate here,” said Eckhouse, referencing the fact that the space is only open to businesses exporting products out of the county.
Pact Outdoors has been operating out of co-founder Noah Schum’s house since its inception in the early 2020’s. Pact is an environmentally friendly way of managing waste in the backcountry, and they’ve taken off in the past few years.
“One of the interesting challenges is [Pact] has really taken off, and they’re sold in REI now. How do you run that business out of Gunnison County?” Said Eckhouse. “Big things like a loading dock aren’t really available for small businesses.”
The warehouse gives business owners access to work space, also providing a loading dock with tools such as pallet jacks available.
“Before [the Hub] Gunnison County didn’t really have a good space for exporters,” said Schum. “All the stuff was stored in crawl spaces or various garages.” He laughed as he reminisced on images of his kids helping to pack orders at the kitchen table.
Kevin Koval, co-founder of Nordjörk, Nordic skiing lifestyle goods, said they moved into the space before construction had completed.
“We needed to get out of our garage,” he said. “It had just gotten to the point where we needed some more room.” In their third winter, Koval mentioned things were no longer working. “If I was stuck in my garage, then I’m going to start making decisions that limit how much I can grow. And that's not the way to run a business. It was life changing for us.” Koval said that mixing his work and home environments had made it almost impossible to focus on anything other than packing orders.
Nordjörk now has two part-time employees that can use the space to help Koval and co-founder Jenn Vona pack orders.
The Hub currently hosts five different companies. They are Pact Outdoors, Nordjörk, Beacon Guidebooks, Campfire Ranch and Proffitt’s Resurrection Land Cruisers.
“None of them are in a place where they need 9,000 square feet, but for us to pull a bunch of them together, we can build this whole cohort in the space,” said Taylor.
The majority of the funding for the project has come from the county and the office of economic development and international trade, while other support comes from the office of economic development commission, the City of Gunnison and Region 10.
“If they’re growing a business beyond Gunnison County, this is the place for them,” said Taylor.
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