Floricane is completing its move to its new home in the Watkins-Cottrell building where Shockoe Slip and Shockoe Bottom meet. (Charlotte Woods)
Last week’s tornado scare didn’t stop one local company from finishing its office move downtown.
Floricane, a leadership consulting firm, has moved into a new home in Shockoe Bottom after vacating a shared office setup in the Richmond Times-Dispatch building on East Franklin Street.
The firm’s new space is in the Watkins-Cottrell building at 117 S. 14th St., which it will share with ad agency Punch.
Founded by VCU alum John Sarvay, Floricane was the first tenant in 2012 to move into what the Times-Dispatch had dubbed as 1E, a 4,000-square-foot collaborative work space concept on the newspaper’s first floor.
In its new digs in the Bottom, Floricane has 700 square feet for its six full-time employees and six contractors, and pays $1,300 a month for rent, Sarvay said. The total space it shares with Punch is about 2,500 square feet, and it has conference rooms, lounges and a full kitchen.
While Floricane and Punch haven’t teamed up on business projects yet, Sarvay is open to the idea of working together.
Sarvay said that moving in with Punch is not an indication of an affiliation of the two firms.
The office space Floricane shares with Punch contains conference rooms and a full kitchen along with lounge areas that Floricane wants to use for client meetings. (Charlotte Woods)
“There’s not a business marriage in the running here,” he said. “We’re not dating, we’re not courting, we’re just shacking up.”
Audrey Hansen, a project coordinator at Floricane who coordinated some of the move, said the company also looked at spaces in Scott’s Addition. Shockoe was attractive because a number of the firm’s clients would be within walking distance.
The firm’s clients are about half nonprofits, and half state agencies and community organizations spanning from Hampton Roads to Charlottesville.
Among its largest clients is the joint venture rehab hospital that Sheltering Arms and VCU Health are building in West Creek.
Sarvay said there’s a poetic twist to the origin of the Floricane name.
While forming the company in 2008, friends gave him feedback about the names he was pondering.
“It started out as a very generic list like ‘Sarvay Strategies’ and ‘River City Consulting,’” he said.
In the meantime, he’d purchased the domain name “Floricane” for a poetry collection he planned to publish. The word, meaning a fruit-bearing vine on a blackberry bush, had been built into a poem he had written.
With the help of friends, including some in advertising, he eventually realized the word fit his goal of having the firm help other organizations bear fruit.
“It’s a fun story and when I talk to people, it’s like you can’t forget and go, ‘What is that firm, Sarvay Strategies … Services?’” he said.
Tom Silvestri, publisher of the Times-Dispatch, said two other outside companies remain in the first-floor shared space on Franklin Street: Daniel Selby CPA and Ziegler Dacus Marketing Communications.
Floricane is completing its move to its new home in the Watkins-Cottrell building where Shockoe Slip and Shockoe Bottom meet. (Charlotte Woods)
Last week’s tornado scare didn’t stop one local company from finishing its office move downtown.
Floricane, a leadership consulting firm, has moved into a new home in Shockoe Bottom after vacating a shared office setup in the Richmond Times-Dispatch building on East Franklin Street.
The firm’s new space is in the Watkins-Cottrell building at 117 S. 14th St., which it will share with ad agency Punch.
Founded by VCU alum John Sarvay, Floricane was the first tenant in 2012 to move into what the Times-Dispatch had dubbed as 1E, a 4,000-square-foot collaborative work space concept on the newspaper’s first floor.
In its new digs in the Bottom, Floricane has 700 square feet for its six full-time employees and six contractors, and pays $1,300 a month for rent, Sarvay said. The total space it shares with Punch is about 2,500 square feet, and it has conference rooms, lounges and a full kitchen.
While Floricane and Punch haven’t teamed up on business projects yet, Sarvay is open to the idea of working together.
Sarvay said that moving in with Punch is not an indication of an affiliation of the two firms.
The office space Floricane shares with Punch contains conference rooms and a full kitchen along with lounge areas that Floricane wants to use for client meetings. (Charlotte Woods)
“There’s not a business marriage in the running here,” he said. “We’re not dating, we’re not courting, we’re just shacking up.”
Audrey Hansen, a project coordinator at Floricane who coordinated some of the move, said the company also looked at spaces in Scott’s Addition. Shockoe was attractive because a number of the firm’s clients would be within walking distance.
The firm’s clients are about half nonprofits, and half state agencies and community organizations spanning from Hampton Roads to Charlottesville.
Among its largest clients is the joint venture rehab hospital that Sheltering Arms and VCU Health are building in West Creek.
Sarvay said there’s a poetic twist to the origin of the Floricane name.
While forming the company in 2008, friends gave him feedback about the names he was pondering.
“It started out as a very generic list like ‘Sarvay Strategies’ and ‘River City Consulting,’” he said.
In the meantime, he’d purchased the domain name “Floricane” for a poetry collection he planned to publish. The word, meaning a fruit-bearing vine on a blackberry bush, had been built into a poem he had written.
With the help of friends, including some in advertising, he eventually realized the word fit his goal of having the firm help other organizations bear fruit.
“It’s a fun story and when I talk to people, it’s like you can’t forget and go, ‘What is that firm, Sarvay Strategies … Services?’” he said.
Tom Silvestri, publisher of the Times-Dispatch, said two other outside companies remain in the first-floor shared space on Franklin Street: Daniel Selby CPA and Ziegler Dacus Marketing Communications.