Switchyards: New work club set to open in Starland District

By Lila Miller

SWITCHYARDS is a new work club opening up in the Starland District, with memberships available on July 24 and doors opening on July 28. Will it switch up the way Savannahians work?

The work club aims to bring workers together in a communal space that's part coffee shop, part college library, and part meeting space for all work-related needs.

I spoke with Creative Director Brandon Hinman last week ahead of the opening to see what all the hype’s about. 

Savannah’s new Switchyards is the 27th club out of soon-to-be 30 Switchyards work clubs across the country. They have made themselves at home in the old Picker Joe’s space located at 217 E. 41st St., across from Lone Wolf Lounge and Sixby’s restaurant.

The coworking space will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week with a membership fee of $100 a month, on a month-to-month basis. 

The membership-based club allows members access to all clubs in the country, offers free coffee locally sourced from Perc Coffee Roasters and Origins, allows members to bring guests for free, has sound proof phone booths and a meeting room that can house up to twenty people, along with their open air desks and spaces, as well as a quiet room with a white noise machine for ultimate focus time. 

Switchyards is based out of Atlanta, and the first club was established in the Fall of 2019, pre-pandemic. Hinman has been working with Switchyards since the beginning, for the last six years alongside founders CEO Michael Tavani and COO Brooks Buffington. 

During and after the pandemic, demand only increased as more people went remote, stayed remote, and still wanted a place to connect with others. 

“We were closed for over a year, but held on for dear life and after the demand was even more. We already had clubs that were on the wait list before Covid, so it was definitely something that people were really resonating with,” Hinman says. 

“Our members, a lot of them will come to Switchyards because it's actually more social than any office setting they've ever been in. Even though you know it's not your direct colleagues necessarily working on the same projects, but the rhythm and the routine and the energy of people working on stuff and focusing and collaborating and taking a break and getting a cup of coffee, just being around that and in a space that has really good design and thoughtful details, I think people are just like, ‘yeah, give, give it to me,’” he explains. 

“But it's no one's primary workspace either, right? We're not an office… On average, our members come a couple times a week for a couple hours, you know? So it's really meant to be this third space for work,” he continues. 

Switchyards has twelve clubs in Atlanta alone, and the thirteenth will open in the Fall. Their target demographic hails from a plethora of different industries and age ranges. 

“Industry-wise, it's really mixed. It's no longer just coders and graphic designers and wedding photographers. We've seen it really stretch out. So in terms of the type of work, anybody that has any sort of remote or hybrid flexibility. Age-wise, we tend to see 25 to 55,” he says. 

$100 a month for a membership is out of a lot of students' budgets, as well as many working-class people. What’s the appeal, and is it worth it? 

“Part of what we're trying to do is take the best aspects of working out of a coffee shop, a college library, and a boutique hotel lobby, and smash it all together in one warehouse, and make it accessible to a working professional. Why don't you have some of those key resources that you had in college throughout your life, right? So we made that, but we also were pretty dead set on it being affordable. We wanted it to feel more like a gym membership or a subscription. We didn't want it to feel like a rent,” he elaborates. 

Hinman and the crew came up with the $100 price tag while thinking about what they would want to pay for an experience and space like Switchyards, likening it to restaurant prices and a gut feeling. 

“Have you ever gone into a restaurant and thought, ‘that price was good,’ and then all sudden, you're like, $38? Then you're like, ‘It looks so good, but I don't want to pay $38.’ You've had that feeling. We’ve had those feelings as consumers, and we paid attention to that,” he says. 

The 24/7 model is an interesting one, with all of the clubs truly being open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

“The mornings where you're up early and the coffee shop hasn't opened, or it's closed, or, like, you gotta put some work in at night. We wanted to make sure that we were catching the early birds and the night owls, and by the time you catch the real early and the real late, pretty close," he says.

"And we just said, ‘Let's do it.’ And it was bold. We tested one in Atlanta, and folks loved it. Club sold out, that club has been on a wait list for most of the time it's been open,” he emphasizes. 

The clubs themselves, including Savannah's, have a membership cap at 250 members.

“It's to make for a really good member experience. It's critical that every time you come here, you get a great seat. And so there is that balance, that perfect balance of there's enough people here to give that energy of being around others, which we're all craving. We all want in our lives without it being too crowded. And then we watch capacity real close after we open. And if we can let in any we do,” he says. 

“The product is so good, the price is so good. People need this more than ever. There's not a ton of stuff like this. We're seeing a big response on these drop days. So good news is that, I mean, the membership is month to month, so you're not signing any sort of lease or multi-month agreement,” he continues. 

What makes Switchyards different from any other coworking space? They prefer to refer to themselves as a work club and eschew the term coworking.

Wework and other spaces were more so in the realm of office rentals rather than curating a space. Switchyards is going business-to-consumer rather than business-to-business.

“We actually don't call ourselves co-working. We're creating this new category, a neighborhood work club. WeWork and other co-working companies like that were going after enterprise. They depended on companies. What we're doing the critical shift here is we're taking sheer workspace model, to the consumer… we're in such an exciting time in the history of work.” he emphasizes. 

There are coffee shops galore in Savannah, free public libraries to sit and work in, and many Savannahians have offices now. Why get a membership at Switchyards?

“When I go into a really good restaurant, bar, cafe, that feels good- when I go over to the Lone Wolf [Lounge] later, I feel a part of something," he says.

"I feel it and it's real and that's what I want people to feel here. I say that because, will you meet people and connect and network and all of that? Yes, but you also got to bring this mindset of being around other people, and getting out of the house and feeling like you're part of this larger, specific narrative. We actually take a ton of inspiration, probably more inspiration from neighborhood pubs, than from offices,” he finishes.

Switchyards drops its memberships on July 24 at 10 a.m. Sign up on their email list and be privy to their deal, the first fifty members that sign up get a year’s membership for $50 a month rather than $100. Membership caps at 250 members, but those interested can put themselves on a waitlist to get in. Switchyards opens July 28, is open 24 hours, seven days a week, located at 217 E. 41st St. Learn more via their website at switchyards.com or via Instagram at @switchyards.