Tag Archives: Triad

Creative housing: ThinkHouseU aims to wring innovation out of entrepreneurial roommates

Bryan Toney, left, associate vice chancellor for economic development and corporate engagement at UNCG, and Justin Streuli, director of the N.C. Entrepreneurship Center at UNCG, stand in front of the house on Silver Avenue in Greensboro that will be renovated for ThinkHouseU. Photo for TBJ by Julie Knight

Bryan Toney, left, associate vice chancellor for economic development at UNCG, and Justin Streuli, director of the N.C. Entrepreneurship Center at UNCG, stand in front of the house that will be renovated for ThinkHouseU. Photo by Julie Knight

Entrepreneurial support is poised to expand once again in Greensboro while taking a step closer to a nationally recognized entrepreneurial haven – the Triangle.

Starting in August 2015, UNC Greensboro will serve as a national pilot for a residential concept called ThinkHouseU. In a renovated house in the Glenwood neighborhood near campus, eight imaginative and determined undergrads with viable visions of new business startups will live together for nine months. They will not only share kitchen space and bathrooms, but swap ideas and encouragement as well.

Chris Gergen, a leader in the Triangle in entrepreneurial support, is behind the effort in Greensboro.

My monthly Triad Next column is here at Medium.com and describes the program. My radio story with Keri Brown at WFDD is at this link.

Crystal clear intentions for the Yadkin River

TRIAD NEXT: My January 2015 column in the Triad Business Journal is a Q&A with Will Scott, the new Yadkin Riverkeeper. The 7,000-square-mile river basis, which provides drinking water for some 700,000 residents, is in good hands. The story is at this link.

Triad Next: Triad builds framework that suits creative class

Joey Adams, 33, a Greensboro software developer, is co-founder of The Forge, a makerspace in downtown Greensboro.

When I was executive editor of the Triad Business Journal from 1998 to 2011, I wrote a weekly front-page column titled Triad Talk. After a three-year hiatus, Editor Mark Sutter agreed to my idea to return as a monthly columnist with a new name, Triad Next. The first column on the Triad’s growing support for young, creative professionals ran on Aug. 29, 2014. It’s behind a paywall for 30 days. But you can see it on Medium.com before then.

Excerpt: Take downtown apartments and ballparks, coffee shops, microbreweries, art hops,food trucks, live theater and bike paths. Add in idea slams, accelerator labs, collaborative office space, entrepreneurial meetups and business incubators. That’s when the perception shifts. That’s when you hear something like this: “I see no reason why I can’t build my company here,” says Chris Padgett, 26, founder of Fusion 3 Design, a 6-month-old 3D-printer manufacturer in east Greensboro. “It’s places like this that make me optimistic.”

Photo by Justin Catanoso