West Philly Apartment Complex Houses Innovation

Cheyenne Shaffer and I wrote this story for Philadelphia Neighborhoods in the summer. West Philadelphia has a high concentration of creative and entrepreneurial people, due to the many college and affordable rent in the area.  

Students at the helm of three startups decided against office space or summer travels in favor of working on their companies from a University City apartment tower. Their motivation, they said, was the close proximity to each other — and other young founders.

The three cofounders of pre-launch collaborative writing platform Escalate.us are sharing an apartment at the Radian — no matter that one is in enrolled in school in Ohio and another in central New Jersey.

The Radian is modern gray apartment building with retail on the ground floor, built into a two-story cement foundation anchor by popular watering hole City Tap House. It is managed by a private Texas property management giant and while it has no official ties to Penn, it caters almost exclusively to a student population. Founders of the now-exited cobrowsing company Firefly also once used their apartment as a makeshift office.

Read the rest of the story here.