© Jerimiah B. Brown

The Workantile Exchange

"Smart people doing cool things"

by Susan Todoroff

posted 8/26/2009

Whether he's climbing Mt. Rainer, renovating a historic building, or developing problem-solving software using what he calls "swarm think," Ann Arbor native Mike Kessler brings passion and creativity to the task. Kessler's latest passion is the Workantile Exchange, a Main Street "coworking" space that looks more like a hip, urban loft than an office.

Kessler, forty, says he and collaborator Matthew Lewis rented the space in the Goodyear Building because they want to be around "smart people doing cool things." By mid-July they had signed up thirty-three members, from filmmakers and a publisher of children's books to journalists and "tech people of many sorts." But Kessler says he's not interested in being a landlord long-term: "I want to get this rolling and eventually hand it off and have it be a nonprofit sustainable thing and just be a member," he says.   

[Originally published in August, 2009.]