A moon's-eye view of luminary-makers at the March 6, 2011 FoolMoon workshop, held at the Workantile Exchange in downtown Ann Arbor. FestiFools asked Jimmie Thompson (former Michigan Artist of the Year) to direct the workshops.

The WorkEx workshops run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. – they are free, and are open to all. If you’d like some help in creating your lantern, here’s a video that gives some guidance. Alternatively, FoolMoon Luminary Sculpture Kits are being sold at several local stores. The kits cost $20, contain all the materials needed to make a koi-shaped lantern, and are available at these Ann Arbor businesses: Downtown Home and Garden, Peaceable Kingdom, Acme Mercantile, Ace Barnes Hardware, B-Green, Yourist Studio Gallery, Found, and Trillium Realty.

On Sunday, March 6, local photographer Myra Klarman captured the action at the WorkEx. See anyone you know?

A family with their octopus luminary wireframe in progress.

Rick Cronn holds his wireframe of a giant head.

Elaine Reed covers her bird wireframe with a layer of tape.

Don Watts begins to assemble his wireframe.

Glueing tissue paper onto a luminary.

Kit Eagal at work on a giant fish.

Meryl Waldo shows off the FoolMoon Luminary Sculpture Kit (she is also the spokesmodel featured on the package). Several retailers in the Ann Arbor area are selling the kits for $20 and giving the proceeds back to FestiFools.

Workantile Exchange community manager Trek Glowacki works with a group on their luminary.

Debra Golden shapes wire for her fish luminary.

Ben and Anna Clingenpeel work together to assemble their wireframe.

Genia Service, Gary Service, Tom McMurtrie, and Garnet Bernier team up to build a Mario Mushroom luminary.

Pre-premiere socializing at the Workantile Exchange for films on urban planning and forms of local government. (Photos by the writer.)

The first film, “The Great Street Toolkit,” focuses on urban planning. The second, “The Council-Manager Form of Local Government,” is an introduction to how the council-manager system is different from a strong mayor system. The city of Ann Arbor uses a modified version of the council-manager form.

As Westphal himself noted lightheartedly, it was the “true wonks” in the audience who stayed for the second film – on council-manager government.

And it turns out that most of the 30 people in the audience were true wonks.

But linked indirectly to the evening in multiple ways was one person who was not in the audience at all –  local developer and downtown property owner, Ed Shaffran.

The wonks included people like Wendy Rampson, head of planning for the city of Ann Arbor; Ed Koryzno, Ypsilanti’s city manager; Diane Giannola, Ann Arbor city planning commissioner; Doug Kelbaugh, former dean of the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; and Steve Bean, recent independent candidate for mayor of Ann Arbor.

Doug Kelbaugh, former dean of the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning, talks with Wendy Rampson, head of Ann Arbor's planning staff.

Westphal, a video producer and urban researcher, will be recognizable to many Chronicle readers as one of the city’s planning commissioners; he also serves on the city’s environmental commission. His previous work includes the film “Insights into a Lively Downtown,” a case study of Ann Arbor.

Each of Westphal’s new films had a running time of 23 minutes, and there was opportunity for the audience to discuss the content of the films before, between and after the showings. Prompting much of the discussion was how the material in the “Great Street” film relates to the Washington-to-Huron block of Main Street, where the Workantile Exchange itself is located. The Washington-to-Huron block includes a number of banking opportunities: Citizens Bank, Chase, KeyBank, and PNC Bank. In addition, Comerica is located just north of Huron, in the One North Main building.

But as the “Great Streets” film makes clear, neither professional planners nor Westphal are fans of banks as a ground-floor use in a downtown environment. [The film was funded in part by a grant from the Urban Design and Preservation division of the American Planning Association.]

Westphal has expressed the same view before, most recently in an early November presentation he made to his colleagues on the planning commission. Describing a surveillance camera photo of a bank robbery in progress, said Westphal: “What I’d like to convince you of tonight is that there are two crimes being committed in this photo. I contend that what this thief is stealing from the bank doesn’t even come close to what underused banks, like this one, steal from the vitality of a downtown.”

Kirk Westphal answered questions as the credits rolled.

And in an opinion piece published in the April 5, 2009 Ann Arbor News, Westphal expressed the general view that ground floor uses should be regulated in the zoning code to give preference to “active uses” – like retail stores, cafes and restaurants.

So how did Ed Shaffran factor into the evening?

When Westphal’s opinion piece was published in The News, it appeared side-by-side with one from Shaffran, who’s a downtown property owner and developer, and who offered a view opposing Westphal’s. From Shaffran’s piece: “On a theoretical level, to say a bank is not an active use and should be located to a secondary street borders on National Socialism.”

The impetus for the two opinion pieces was the city’s A2D2 rezoning initiative for downtown Ann Arbor, which at the time was being debated by the city council. The original A2D2 proposal included some restrictions on ground-floor uses in certain areas – preference was given to active uses. But those restrictions were removed from the version of the A2D2 rezoning that was approved by the Ann Arbor city council in November 2009.

And Shaffran, as it turns out, was featured in a serendipitous cameo in Westphal’s “Great Streets” film, which included footage shot by Westphal in downtown Ann Arbor. In the frame, Shaffran can briefly be seen walking towards the camera east along Liberty Street, talking on his cell phone.

At left: Jesse Bernstein, chair of the board of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, chats with Ray Detter, president of the Downtown Citizens Advisory Council, before the film premiere. In the foreground is Trek Glowacki, co-owner of the Workantile Exchange.

Another Shaffran connection to the film premiere: He owns the building at 118 Main St. that houses the Workantile Exchange, where the films were shown.

And it was the Workantile Exchange itself that generated some of the conversation after the “Great Streets” showing. Why? Parade examples of non-active uses of space are banks and offices. And the coworking space offered by the Workantile Exchange is somewhat similar to shared office space. Does coworking space constitute an active use in an urban planning sense?

The day before the showing, Trek Glowacki, co-owner of the Workantile Exchange, explained to The Chronicle that one key difference between a coworking space and a shared office arrangement is the business model. In a shared office space, every tenant would have an assigned desk, and the rent for the space would be divided equally among the tenants. If a tenant moves out, the remaining tenants would pay slightly more rent. If tenants were added, the rent would decrease accordingly.

In contrast, the Workantile’s coworking space doesn’t guarantee a permanent desk in a specific location. The furniture is on wheels, and will be configured differently on any given day, depending on who shows up to work, when they show up, and who they might be collaborating with. The Workantile is calibrated to a culture that is inherently more collaborative than an arrangement where the only expectation is that you pay the rent for your desk. This community of coworking is a key part of what Glowacki describes as the Workantile’s role in the city’s economic development.

So, the monthly fee paid to the Workantile is not a desk rental, but rather a membership that gives access to a working community and the expectation of a contribution to that community. The space itself includes all the typical amenities that you’d expect in an office, including access to two conference rooms.

Window view of the Workantile Exchange last Wednesday night.

The configurable space inside the Workantile makes it suitable for hosting various kinds of events. For example, on Friday, Dec. 3, the same day as Midnight Madness in downtown Ann Arbor, author David Erik Nelson, a Workantile member, hosted a book-signing event for his latest title, “Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred.” The book is written for parents who’d like to make things with their kids – like boomerangs. With all the tables rolled to the walls, there was plenty of room to fling the boomerangs around the main floor. The Workantile Christmas tree is now bedecked with boomerangs.

And of course the space is suitable for hosting a film premiere.

So one of questions at the conclusion of the film came from the Workantile’s Glowacki, who told Westphal to be honest: Is the Workantile Exchange an active use of space?

Before answering, Westphal wanted some clarification about what the usage patterns were. Glowacki told him there was generally someone working 20 hours out of every day. Westphal noted that the use was certainly more active when Mighty Good Coffee had its storefront at the front of the space – but in September 2010 Mighty Good moved up the block to a new location at 217 N. Main St. Now, the whole space is occupied by the Workantile.

At a meeting of Workantile coworkers soon after Mighty Good Coffee departed, they discussed possible alternatives for the area previously used by the coffee shop’s store front. One idea batted around at the meeting was rotating window displays showing off the work of members. Attractive windows offering things of interest to pedestrians is one feature that Westphahl’s “Great Streets” film highlighted as important for a vibrant downtown.

From outside the Workantile on Wednesday night, the film premiere taking place on the other side of the glass wasn’t necessarily accessible to every member of the public – the sign on the door indicated a private event was taking place. But through the window it was clear the space was filled with activity.

Dave Askins, editor and co-founder of The Chronicle, is a member of the Workantile Exchange.

A confluence of textures at the Workantile Exchange. The wheels on the table legs let them glide across the predominantly hardwood floors to wherever they need to be.

What kind of “helpful” customer rearranges whole shelves of technology books at Borders – because the downtown Ann Arbor bookstore has them organized in a less-than-optimal way? Trek Glowacki.

For that sort of book rearranging, Glowacki is supported by the credential of a master’s in library science from the University of Michigan’s School of Information. Plus, the “self-described information problem solver” spends a lot of time at Border’s. It wasn’t some kind of drive-by book reorganization.

Given that Glowacki is inclined to reconfigure the space he inhabits – even if it’s a public space – it’s not surprising that he and his colleague, Jesse Sielaff, wound up using the Workantile Exchange as the venue for a course they taught recently.

That venue is a new coworking space at 118 S. Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor – a space furnished mostly with chairs and tables on wheels. It’s intended to be easily configured by the members of the Workantile Exchange to suit the specific needs of a particular project on a particular day.

The 3,000 square foot Workantile is partitioned into a very public area towards the front (just behind the new Mighty Good Coffee storefront), private areas for phone calls, plus a conference room towards the back.

But it was Workantile’s 800 square foot Training Loft that Glowacki and Sielaff used to teach their 5-week Ruby on Rails course. That course concluded on Thursday – the same day that Ann Arbor public schools wound up their year.

What’s Ruby on Rails? [Hint: It's not a Wizard of Oz mass transit system.] And how does teaching classes fit into Workantile’s culture of coworking?

Jesse Sielaff at the whiteboard. (Image links to larger file). Over the five-week course, as the Workantile Exchange was built out, the white board on the easel would be replaced with a whole wall covered in white board.

The Ruby on Rails Class

Ruby on Rails is a web programming framework.

Glowacki and Sielaff’s course was designed for people who had some programming background. So when Glowacki quizzed the 16 students on the first day of class about their No. 1 programming language, the answers that came back were multiple instances of  C++, Perl, Java, PHP, plus even one MATLAB.

The teaching pair had run a course for non-programmers several times before at UM’s School of Information. So Glowacki was concerned about finding a good pace of presentation – he asked students to not be shy about providing feedback on that. His invitation to throw tomatoes, if that’s how they felt, was met with the deadpan query: “Will there be a break so we can get tomatoes?”

During the times we observed the class in session, we did not witness the launch of any vegetables.

For most of the first hour of class, it was Sielaff who wielded the marker at the dry erase board. But Glowacki would add bits and pieces of his own commentary – the pair’s pedagogical style truly merits the label “team teaching.” They’re able to complete each other’s sentences in a seamless, unobtrusive and non-disruptive way.

Trek Glowacki, at right, checks out the results from Brian Nixon's screen. In the foreground, Brett Higgins.

It’s clear they both share an affection for the Ruby programming language. There’s not so much love for PHP. Outside of class, Glowacki explained to The Chronicle that the “concept space” of PHP was overly complex, and the language lacked a design aesthetic. For looping, Glowacki said, PHP used a special syntax to accomplish it. Ruby, on the other hand, is designed in a way that the kind of things that need to be looped – namely, collections of things –  know how to loop themselves.

On the last day of class, seven students had persisted until the end, and Glowacki pointed them to a URL where they could take a survey to give feedback on the course. Some of them, like Brian Nixon, provided the feedback directly: “I would recommend you guys for anything.”

In addition to the survey on the course, Glowacki asked students to take an online survey about the Training Loft space where the course had been taught.

The Workantile Exchange as a Training/Meeting Space

The course offered by Glowacki and Sielaff was free this time to students. But that’s not a sustainable model for the future – for the two teachers or the Workantile Exchange.

As The Chronicle reported back in January, the Workantile coworking space is a venture by Michael Kessler to adapt the former Arcadian Too antique store space to a modern use. (The old Arcadian Too sign still designates parking for the building in the rear).

Rather than recruit “anchor tenants” for the space, Kessler wants to anchor it with meetings, classes and events. So the  Training Loft used for the Ruby on Rails course is a key part of the economics for the Workantile. The meeting areas, like the Training Loft, can be used for a fee by non-members and reserved by members.

Currently, individual memberships are priced at $100 a month, require a three-month commitment and a $50 set-up fee.

From what we’ve observed so far – as the venture has gotten up and running over the last couple of weeks –  individual Workantile members can be found mostly in the vast open area just behind the Mighty Good Coffee storefront, an area called The Parlor.

Every evening during this initial phase, Kessler shoves the rollable tables in The Parlor against the wall and pins the chairs behind them. That means that members who show up to cowork will need to actively configure their space to work, instead of just accepting what was left from the day before.

An overhead webcam is documenting the table configurations actually used by the members. The idea is to try to identify patterns of use that could inform decisions about how to invest in any additional amenities.

Over the last week, there’ve been several potential members drop by to work for a while just  to try it out. For some, it’s been a little hard to assess what working there will be like, as the some of the  construction on the Mighty Good Coffee storefront has created some noise that presumably won’t be typical.

The frontmost part of The Parlor is separated from the sidewalk of Main Street only by a plate of glass. It can work as a vantage point from which to watch Main Street pedestrians. It’s where some of the words for this article were written. And where some future words for Chronicle articles will be written.

[Editor's note: Dave Askins pays for an individual membership in the Workantile Exchange.]

Training Loft space at the Workantile Exchange on the last day of the Ruby on Rails class.

Workantile Exchange view from Training Loft looking towards the front – Main Street.

Some of the ubiquitous electric outlets at the Workantile Exchange

First day of the Ruby on Rails class.

Counter of Mighty Good Coffee storefront under construction. It's now done and open for business.

Tom Brandt signing in at the Ruby on Rails class at the Workantile Exchange. In the background at left, extending his hand in greeting, is Joe Minock.

Trek Glowacki on the last day of the Ruby on Rails class.