Green Village Philadelphia houses six social businesses, looking for more

Suddenly 1650 Arch Street is an anchor of the Philadelphia tech community.

The building, wedged steps away from the Comcast Center, is home to two of Philadelphia’s newest collaborative spaces: SeedPhilly and Green Village Philadelphia. SeedPhilly, the startup incubation space, is still ordering furniture and filling out its suite, but their neighbors at Green Village have been open for just over a month and a half.

The space, focused on incubating “triple bottom line” businesses, opened on December 1st and is already housing six companies with space for six more. The goal: to help Philadelphia’s thriving social entrepreneurship community finally have a space to call their own. The city already boasts organizations like Good Company Ventures, Murex Investments and B-Corp and its reputation nationally as a place of socially-minded entrepreneurship continues to grow.

“There are a lot of scattered resources and I’m hearing that its difficult to access them,” says Green Village Philadelphia executive director Zoe Selzer. “Just knowing where to go for different things, you often have to go stumbling around.”

Green Village hopes to solve that problem by offering cheap office space (Each desk is $275/month) to companies as well as programs and classes to help pre-revenue companies mature with the help of a mentor. The non-profit does not take an equity stake in the companies it houses and only has a full-time staff of one with a six person board of directors.

The organization has existed for seven years and originally had ambitions for an entire “green village,” a complete city block dedicated to sustainability. Shortly after Selzer came on board two years ago the group instead decided a single space was a more practical place to start.

After the jump, see the full list of the companies housed at Green Village:

OneTwoSee – Creates television companion programming for mobile devices.
Urban Ecoforms – Makers of green roofs, walls and landscaping.
Wash Cycle Laundry – The company transports laundry to eco friendly facilities by bicycle.
FBH – The Agency – The group behind Philly Fashion Week, just moved in this week.
AgileSwitch – The company develops technology hat manufactures electronic components that help green technologies such as wind turbines convert wind to electricity. Read our previous coverage of the company here.
Shenandoah Studios – The Philadelphia offices of video game development company with a UK presence.