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Coworking / Lifestyle / Workplace culture

With new location, The Cube is bringing babysitting services to Function Coworking Community

The Hamilton-Lauraville space brings The Cube into Baltimore city, and offers more room. Four years in, cofounder Dr. Tammira Lucas sees a future in it being a resource to other coworking spaces.

The exterior of Function Coworking Community. (Photo by Stephen Babcock)

The Cube Cowork has a new location, where it will partner with an existing shared workspace to extend the mission of helping parents building a business as well as a family.

The Cube, which offers babysitting services to entrepreneurs and creatives, will be located upstairs from Function Coworking Community in Baltimore city’s Hamilton-Lauraville neighborhood.

The Oct. 1 move ticks off a couple of boxes cofounder Dr. Tammira Lucas was looking to check with a move: It’s inside the city limits, as the space was initially located in Towson’s Stoneleigh community when Lucas and cofounder TeKesha Jamison opened it in 2016 with an eye toward helping parents remove a barrier to getting stuff done and reduce the cost of childcare. Plus, it’s about double the size of the initial space, offering more room for kids and parents to move through their daily tasks in separate areas. The Cubs is also setting aside space to host events, and to set up a studio for folks to create content such as podcasts or videos, Lucas said.

In partnering with Function, it marks a change for The Cube in how the space offers its services. Whereas it started as a coworking space in and of itself, Lucas said The Cube is now looking to work alongside existing spaces to offer babysitting, which has been a key differentiator.

“Our goal is to be able to go into other coworking spaces and implement our services,” Lucas said.

Lucas said the move was made with an eye toward sustainability. While The Cube was among the coworking spaces that brought lesser usage and new protocols during the pandemic, it found an uptick in members seeking virtual mailbox to receive business mail remotely during the pandemic. Looking forward, Lucas sees the pandemic bringing shifts meant to keep coworking spaces running short term, but could lead to an influx of interest in shared models that enable remote work.

“How can we merge our resources and our human capacity to sustain through this time, and be prepared for the surge and growth of coworking spaces?” Lucas said.

Two women standing in their coworking space

The Cube cofounders Tammira Lucas and TaKesha Jamison. (Courtesy photo)

Function was opened two years ago along Harford Road by Gene Ward and Lisa Frank and brought coworking as well as community gathering and art gallery space. With The Cube upstairs, members will be able to access the babysitting and other services The Cube offers. Lucas, who also cofounded Moms as Entrepreneurs, also sees events focused on women in business in the future.

In effect, it can help to build the Function community. At a time when the nationwide reckoning over racial justice is leading to new conversations about growing Black-owned businesses, the model shows a path for businesses to work together to help each other grow.

“I think this is a really good example of how minority-owned businesses can work with their white counterparts to build businesses and be successful together,” Lucas said.

The location in the city brings potential to work with other businesses in the Northeast Baltimore area. Moving from a more suburban location to the city opens up a chance to work with a more diverse cross-section of people and businesses. And it’s among a growing collection of resources working on inclusive offerings: In May, the U.S. Small Business Administration opened a new Maryland Women’s Business Center at Morgan State University, which is nearby.

“Now we are strategically located in a community where it’s diverse in income, it’s diverse in people and it’s diverse in businesses,” Lucas said.

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