South Street just got its first coworking space

Inside what used to be the Pearl Arts building, a block off Jim’s Steaks on South Street, there’s a 23,000-square-feet coworking space called Joynture in soft-launch mode.

The coworking space, whose flagship is in New York City, can host teams from two to 50 employees and offers companies access to a conference center with space for up to 100 people. The usual fixins are of course there: WiFi, printing services, coffee, a bike room and free access to events. Also of note: members that commit to a full year membership get $5,000 in Amazon Web Services (AWS) credit.

Though an official opening is slated to happen next month, its first anchor tenant will be moving a team of 14 into the space on April 1: Lyft is popping up a marketing and logistics team of 14. Not a bad start. Lyft was initially based at coworking space City CoHo and was most recently at Industrious.

At Joynture’s South Philly spot. (Courtesy photo)

In an already competitive coworking space, packed with both bootstrapped, homegrown companies and venture-backed out-of-towners giants, how does the space plan to stand out? For cofounder Kyle Riggle, the South Philly location is key.

“Our location is different than that of other centers,” Riggle told Technical.ly. “We’re helping take advantage of the microcosm of Queen Village and Society Hill demographic that doesn’t have a lot of commercial spaces. You can see a lot of workers popping up at coffee shops.” (There’s some truth to that. See: Bella Vista’s Rally coffee shop coworking combo.)

Riggle, a Bay area native with ties to the Brooklyn tech scene by way of data company EWS, moved with his wife to a Point Breeze home in 2015. Since then, he’s been tapping into the local tech ecosystem, serving as a mentor in Ballard Spahr’s BASE startup program and popping his head in at local meetup groups, for example.

South Philly views. (Courtesy photo)

The cofounder will be running the space locally. To his credit, he speaks with a humble disposition about the local ecosystem.

“I’m not here to intrude,” said Riggle. “I just want to be a resource. I uprooted our lives and moved here, which I think tells you how much I wanna see the entrepreneurship scene that’s happening here just keep growing.”

(Fun fact: As we exchanged DM’s with Riggle about the upcoming space, his wife went into labor with their first kid. Congrats, Kyle!)