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Tag: event space

  • The Future of Your Office is an Event Space

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    As a child, Shane Pliska loved to run through the foliage of his parents’ Michigan greenhouse. He never could have predicted that the cozy family business would one day moonlight as a venue for luxury weddings and galas. Now, as the company’s president and CEO, Pliska oversees two businesses in one: Planterra, the B2B interior landscaping firm that his father opened more than 50 years ago, and Planterra Conservatory, the tricked-out hothouse declared one of the best garden wedding spaces on earth by Harper’s Bazaar. 

    Planterra’s business may be unique, but its dual-duty space usage isn’t. Even major corporations such as Salesforce have opted in recent years to open up their offices to public-event rentals. The U.S. office sublease market surged following the pandemic as companies sought to leverage their spare square footage for extra cash, either on their own or through third-party booking platforms like Giggster and Peerspace. Though the trend has cooled Though the trend has cooled somewhat, this piece will show you: 

    • How renting out office space can not only fortify your bottom line but also your company’s community ties
    • When it makes sense to split off your events business into its own company like Planterra did—but how to have the two benefit one another
    • What protections you need to put in place to mitigate risk, from legal liability to reputational damage 

    Multiple uses can unlock a business’s hustle culture

    The first wave of corporate workspaces-turned-event venues emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. “That’s when we started to see offices get repurposed for a variety of non-traditional uses” from weddings to movie locations,says Gordon Lamphere, VP for Van Vlissingen and Co, a commercial real-estate firm whose portfolio spans the Chicago metro area. Though the trend was most prevalent in suburban office campuses as tenants relocated to urban workspaces, variations on the pattern played out in urban workspaces following the pandemic.

    Then and now, the move can be perilous for companies that take the plunge. “Although you’re generating short-term revenue, at the same time, events create a bunch of negative externalities in terms of risk,” Lamphere says. Fines from municipal zoning violations or legal liabilities, property damage, and added operational costs can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars apiece. Then there’s the biggest potential cost to corporate tenants: If they break their landlord’s terms, companies risk defaulting on their office leases or losing their leases altogether.. That means they’re potentially left holding the bag for the full amount of rent remaining on the lease as stipulated by the terms of their lease, as well as landlord re-leasing expenses and even potential legal penalties. For these reasons, Lamphere says that office subleasing is typically a venture “of last resort” by businesses that are floundering.

    The story doesn’t always end poorly. Plantera was among those to launch its events business amid the blows of 2008. Based in the affluent Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield, the firm was in the midst of building a 22,000-square foot glass conservatory showpiece for its plant installations when the recession struck. “General Motors was our biggest customer, and they went bankrupt at the same time that we were spending all this money,” Pliska says.  

    Planterra’s conservatory. Photo: Courtesy company

    To help recoup costs, Pliska started accepting wedding inquiries at the conservatory in 2011. Though he admits that the first events were disruptive and underpriced, he eventually refined the model into a steady operation that hosts multiple weddings each week. The conservatory now functions as a separate events venue while Planterra’s plant-services division moved to a warehouse facility. Each business operates with dedicated staff but also serves as a vendor to the other, clarifying costs and responsibilities. Though the events business has made the company more resilient — event pricing ranges from $26,000 to over $90,000 — the original B2B operation remains Planterra’s primary driver of revenue. Planterra’s event company now has 35 W-2 employees in addition to outsourced catering subcontractors, while the core business employs 85 W-2 staff and 200 contractors.  

    Other organizations have approached event hosting less as a financial lifeline than a chance to bolster their company’s culture and build relationships. 

    Ascender, an entrepreneurship incubator and coworking space in Pittsburgh, began renting out its roomy office entryway a few years ago to fill a broader local need for flexible, mid-sized meeting spaces. CEO Nadyli Nuñez says that the gatherings, which range from product launches to personal celebrations, bring a welcome warmth and energy to Ascender’s headquarters while being far enough removed from people’s workspaces to avoid causing disruption. Though events do provide some revenue, the extra income is more of a bonus than the primary goal. It’s been more about vibes and using the space we have to help people, Nuñez explains. Since recovering from a COVID-era slowdown in late 2022, Ascender has brought in about $16,000 in annual events revenue, and has already hit $17,500 for 2025. 

    A similar emphasis underpins the model of the Los Angeles firm SPF:architects, whose Culver City headquarters houses the company’s design studio and other corporate tenants, as well as a gallery and outdoor area that serves as an event space]. “We thought about flexibility and duality from the beginning,” says founder and design principal Zoltan E. Pali. Events aren’t a core revenue driver — the firm doesn’t separately track the event revenue, includes it in the company’s overall earnings.They are a “complementary piece” of the business, and “a way to support the arts, give a platform to underrepresented artists, and build community,” Pali says.  

    Smart hosting is good business

    Whatever the incentive, even relatively low-stakes missteps threaten to undermine a company’s image — a lesson Pliska learned the hard way when one of Planterra’s early events, a high-end charity benefit, went memorably awry. “[The committee that was planning the event] decided that they were going to spend the majority of the budget on their favorite ’80s cover band,” Pliska recalls. Not only was the choice misaligned with ticket-buyers’ tastes, but the expenditure meant that guests were served casual hors d’oeuvres instead of the expected dinner. 

    As the planning committee head-bopped to the music, the attendees quietly left to dine elsewhere. “It reflected poorly on the charity event, but it actually ultimately reflected poorly on us,” Pliska says. It was a turning point for the business. From that point on, Planterra handled its event planning in-house. 

    Whether or not an events scheme is intended as a play for revenue, businesses are advised to approach the endeavor with a sense of ownership. “Treat the event space as an extension of your business and consider hiring someone dedicated to managing it,” Pali says, adding that planning, programming, and marketing take real time and effort. “Don’t underestimate the commitment.”

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    Kelli María Korducki

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  • Ron DeSantis’s Joyless Ride

    Ron DeSantis’s Joyless Ride

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    Real-life Ron DeSantis was here, finally. In the fidgety flesh; in Iowa, South Carolina, and, in this case, New Hampshire. Not some distant Sunshine State of potential or idealized Donald Trump alternative or voice in the far-off static of Twitter Spaces. But an actual human being interacting with other human beings, some 200 of them, packed into an American Legion hall in the town of Rochester.

    “Okay, smile, close-up,” an older woman told the Florida governor, trying to pull him in for another photo. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, had just finished a midday campaign event, and the governor was now working a quick rope line—emphasis on quick and double emphasis on working. The fast-talking first lady is much better suited to this than her halting husband. He smiled for the camera like the dentist had just asked him to bite down on a blob of putty; like he was trying to make a mold, or to fit one. It was more of a cringe than a grin.

    “Governor, I have a lot of relatives in Florida,” the next selfie guy told him. Everybody who meets DeSantis has relatives in Florida or a time-share on Clearwater Beach or a bunch of golf buddies who retired to the Villages. “Wow, really?” DeSantis said.

    He was trying. But this did not look fun for him.

    Retail politicking was never DeSantis’s gift. Not that it mattered much before, in the media-dominated expanse of Florida politics, where DeSantis has proved himself an elite culture warrior and troller of libs. DeSantis was reelected by 19 points last November. He calls himself the governor of the state “where woke goes to die,” which he believes will be a model for his presidency of the whole country, a red utopia in his own image.

    From the May 2023 issue: How did America’s weirdest, most freedom-obsessed state fall for an authoritarian governor?

    What does the on-paper promise of DeSantis look like in practice? DeSantis has performed a number of these in-person chores in recent days, after announcing his presidential campaign on May 24 in a glitchy Twitter Spaces appearance with Elon Musk.

    As I watched him complete his rounds in New Hampshire on Thursday—visits to a VFW hall, an Elks Club, and a community college, in addition to the American Legion post—the essential duality of his campaign was laid bare: DeSantis is the ultimate performative politician when it comes to demonstrating outrage and “kneecapping” various woke abuses—but not so much when it comes to the actual in-person performance of politics.

    The campaign billed his appearance in Rochester as a “fireside chat.” (The outside temperature was 90 degrees, and there was no actual fire.) The governor and first lady also held fireside chats this week at a welding shop in Salix, Iowa, and at an event space in Lexington, South Carolina. The term conjures the great American tradition started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Those were scary times—grim visages of malnourished kids and food riots and businessmen selling pencils on the street. FDR’s cozy evenings around the radio hearth were meant to project comfort and avuncular authority.

    Sitting on gray armchairs onstage in Rochester—Casey cross-legged and Ron man-spread—the DeSanti reassured their audience that the Florida governor was the candidate best equipped to protect Americans from contemporary threats no less serious than stock-market crashes and bank closures. He was focused on a distinct set of modern menaces: “woke indoctrination” and “woke militaries” and “woke mind viruses” and “woke mobs” that endanger every institution of American life. He used woke more than a dozen times at each event (I counted).

    Also, DeSantis said he’s a big supporter of “the death penalty for pedophiles” (applause); reminded every audience that he’d sent dozens of migrants to “beautiful Martha’s Vineyard” (bigger applause); and promised to end “this Faucian dystopia” around COVID once and for all (biggest applause).

    Also, George Soros (boo).

    Mark Leibovich: Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis

    Casey talked at each New Hampshire stop about the couple’s three young children, often in the vein of how adorably naughty they are—how they write on the walls of the governor’s mansion with permanent markers and leave crayon stains on the carpets. Ron spoke in personal terms less often, but when he did, it was usually to prove that he understands the need to protect kids from being preyed upon by the various and ruthless forces of wokeness. One recurring example on Thursday involved how outrageous it is that in certain swim competitions, a girl might wind up being defeated by a transgender opponent. “I’m particularly worried about this as the father of two daughters,” DeSantis told the Rochester crowd.

    This played well in the room full of committed Republicans and likely primary voters, as it does on Fox. Clearly, this is a fraught and divisive issue, but one that’s been given outsized attention in recent years, especially in relation to the portion of the population it directly affects. By comparison, DeSantis never mentioned gun violence, the leading cause of death for children in this country, including many in his state (the site of the horrific Parkland massacre of 2018, the year before he became governor). DeSantis readily opts for the culture-war terrain, ignoring the rest, pretty much everywhere he goes.

    His whole act can feel like a clunky contrivance—a forced persona railing against phony or hyped-up outrages. He can be irascible. Steve Peoples, a reporter for the Associated Press, approached DeSantis after a speech at a VFW hall in Laconia and asked the governor why he hadn’t taken any questions from the audience. “Are you blind?” DeSantis snapped at Peoples. “Are you blind? Okay, so, people are coming up to me, talking to me [about] whatever they want to talk to me about.”

    No one in the room cared about this little outburst besides the reporters (who sent a clip of it bouncing across social media within minutes). And if the voters did care, it would probably reflect well on DeSantis in their eyes, demonstrating his willingness to get in the media’s face.

    Yair Rosenberg: DeSantis is making the same mistake Democrats did in 2020

    Journalists who managed to get near DeSantis this week unfailingly asked him about Donald Trump, the leading GOP candidate. In Rochester, NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez wondered about the former president’s claim that he would eliminate the federal government’s “administrative state” within six months of a second term. “Why didn’t you do it when you had four years?” DeSantis shot back.

    In general, though, DeSantis didn’t mention Trump without being prompted—at least not explicitly. He drew clear, if barely veiled, contrasts. “I will end the culture of losing in the Republican Party,” he vowed Thursday night in Manchester. Unsaid, obviously, is that the GOP has underperformed in the past three national elections—and no one is more to blame than Trump and the various MAGA disciples he dragged into those campaigns.

    “Politics is not about building a brand,” DeSantis went on to say. What matters is competence and conviction, not charisma. “My husband will never back down!” Casey added in support. In other words: He is effective and he will follow through and actually do real things, unlike you-know-who.

    “Politics is not about entertainment,” DeSantis said in all of his New Hampshire speeches, usually at the end. He might be trying to prove as much.

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    Mark Leibovich

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