After just a year of marketing, the HuB Building on Fruitville Road and its namesake business incubator are full.
Owned by Sarasota entrepreneur Jesse Biter, the 40,000- square-foot building is primarily occupied by the HuB collaborative workspace, which occupies the third floor and half of the four-story building’s second floor.
With the arrival of the Economic Development Corp. of Sarasota County and the leasing of some remaining second floor incubator space, the building is now 100 percent committed.
The initial 37 incubator offices became so popular that HuB founder Rich Swier Jr. and Biter built an additional 17 collaborative workspaces earlier this year.
“It was leased before we even got the furniture,” said Swier. “It filled up quick.”
The last of those incubator units was rented out to a start-up company called Uvidea, which helps schools attract students with online videos.
The other half of the second floor is occupied by a HuB-related company, Lucid Global, which uses holograms and three-dimensional animation to help medical professionals explain health care matters to patients.
Lucid Global last week won one of the first STEMsmart Innovation awards issued by the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce and the Gulf Coast Community Foundation.
The EDC took 4,000 square feet of the fourth floor in September. The remainder of that floor is occupied by Biter Enterprises and its Dealers United business, which works to provide group buying power to independent car dealers.
The renovated building opened early this year.
“It’s pretty amazing to fill up a building like this, especially in this time of economic uncertainty,” said Swier. “It just shows you how much entrepreneurial activity is out there.”
Thirty separate businesses are in the 54 HuB offices, not counting Lucid Global.
“The HuB started out as people I knew,” Swier said. “But I didn’t know 90 percent of the people who are in the HuB now, until they moved in.”
HuB collaborative workspace’s tenants pay affordable flat-rate rents. Their offices are arranged around outside windows, with much of the interior space considered common areas for informal meetings and even the occasional party.