Why we built Think Tank

2020, and a county full of people who stopped commuting

Snohomish County has always exported its workforce. Tens of thousands of people slept in Everett, Marysville, Mukilteo, Lake Stevens and Snohomish, and worked in Seattle and Bellevue. Then, almost overnight, they didn't. The commute vanished and the kitchen table became the office.

For a few months that felt like freedom. Then it felt like a problem. There was nowhere professional to meet a client. There was no separation between the workday and the rest of life. And the people who'd spent a decade building a network downtown suddenly had nobody to run an idea past.

Everett deserved a place built for the way people were actually going to work, not a satellite office for a company headquartered somewhere else, and not a coffee shop pretending to be one. Nobody downtown had built one yet, so we did.

The building came first

Downtown Everett is full of early-1900s brick and timber, and most of it had been waiting a long time for someone to take it seriously. The Wetmore building had the bones: tall windows, exposed structure, ceilings you can think under. Renovating it during a pandemic was, in hindsight, an aggressive plan. It opened in 2021 anyway.

Everything after that was a choice about what a working day should feel like. Wired gig fiber at the desks and fast wifi everywhere else. Coffee and espresso with no counter to buy them at. A roof you can actually work on. A door you can close when the call matters.

What went into the building

• Gig speed fiber, plus ultra fast wifi. Private offices and dedicated desks plug straight into Cat6 for the wired gig connection. Drop-in coworking, day passes and conference room bookings run on the wifi. Either way, a dropped call is worse than no office at all.
• A rooftop deck with outdoor wifi. You can answer email in the sun without losing the connection.
• A private phone booth. For the call you cannot take at a shared table.
• The Beat. A podcast studio that doubles as a Zoom room, booked by the hour with unlimited credits for members.
• Two meeting rooms. The Bulb seats 6, The Huddle seats 12, both with equipment that works the first time.
• Keyless access, 24/7. At every membership level, because a 6am person and a 10pm person are both real.

What we decided not to do

• No hard sell. A tour is fifteen minutes and there is no pitch at the end of it. If a day pass answers your question better than we can, buy the day pass.
• No hidden line items. Coffee, internet, cleaning, printing and the phone booth are in the membership. We would rather quote one number and mean it.
• No pretending we have space we don't. When the full-time offices are full, the site says they're full. It costs us inquiries and it's still the right call.
• No growth for its own sake. One building, run well, by people who are in it.

Who's here now

Remote employees whose companies gave up their Seattle floors. Freelancers and consultants. Therapists, coaches, attorneys and CPAs running solo practices. Mortgage, insurance and real estate professionals who need somewhere real to meet clients. Founders with two employees and a plan for twelve. They drive in from across the county. A few minutes from downtown, fifteen from Lake Stevens or Mukilteo, twenty from Snohomish.

What members write about most in reviews isn't the wifi. It's who was sitting at the next desk.

Still the same plan

Build one room in downtown Everett good enough that people choose it over their own house. Keep the prices legible. Answer the phone. That's the whole strategy.

Come see whether it worked. 2817 Wetmore Avenue. Fifteen minutes, no pitch.