Roundhouse coworking space closes, leaving nonprofits in the lurch | The Homepage

Guests eat and mingle at an Aug. 27, 2025, event hosted by The Mon Water Project at The Roundhouse. The water advocacy nonprofit rented an office there through OneValley, but had to vacate it when the coworking company informed tenants it was leaving Hazelwood Green as of June 30. Photo by Annie Quinn for The Mon Water Project

By Managing Editor Juliet Martinez

When OneValley coworking at The Roundhouse emailed members on May 13, nobody expected to learn they were getting kicked out as of June 30.

The email said that “building this community over the past several years has been an incredible experience,” but the California-based entrepreneurship platform “has not been able to meet its lease obligations to our landlord.” Hence the evictions.

OneValley moved into The Roundhouse at 4165 Blair St. in 2021. It collected a variety of tenants, from tech types in the orbit of Mill 19 to lawyers, accountants, and small nonprofits with roots in the neighborhood. In June, as the eviction date loomed, those nonprofits were scrambling to find somewhere that would meet their needs as well as OneValley had.

Todd Stern is managing director of U3 Advisors, a real estate and development advisor to Almono Limited Partnership. Almono is a joint venture between the Claude Worthington Benedum, Richard K. Mellon, and Heinz foundations. This partnership owns Hazelwood Green, including The Roundhouse.

Mr. Stern said a new prospective tenant is interested in The Roundhouse, but without a signed lease, he declined to name them.

However, he confirmed that OneValley had not paid its rent in a “very very long time” in a May 14 email to The Homepage. He would not say exactly how long, but in a May 29 phone call said the situation had dragged on for “a couple of years.”

Even so, OneValley coworking tenants had no idea, according to Annie Quinn, founder of the Mon Water Project.

“There was no warning. There was no discussion,” Ms. Quinn said on June 3.

The Mon Valley Water Project is a young nonprofit; it has been in operation since 2022 but officially got its 501(c)3 nonprofit status in May.

The organization focuses on water advocacy in Four Mile Run and Hazelwood. Water advocacy means working on issues relating to water utilities, stormwater and sewers. Learn more about The Mon Water Project on Page 3.

When Ms. Quinn was filing the paperwork for nonprofit status, her lawyer told her she could not be based out of her home. She said that in the organization’s early years, she was “going broke on coffee,” because she did so much remote work and held so many meetings in coffee shops.

Last May, the organization got start-up funding from Heinz Endowments that enabled her to devote herself to it full-time. That was when she dipped her toe into coworking at OneValley by renting a “hot desk.” She paid $150 per month to have access to a desk, Wi-Fi, lights and climate control. The coffee was free and the space was beautiful, with plants, sofas and meeting areas. She was excited to have a place for the board of directors to meet for the first time.

“I realized it wasn’t a luxury to have an office,” she said. “It’s just normal business practice.”

Being near Hazelwood and Four Mile Run was important too. In October, Ms. Quinn upgraded to a full, locked office at OneValley for $650 per month. It allowed her to hire an employee and move the organization’s supplies out of her basement.

“As an organization that’s felt so fluid and so ephemeral for all this time — that it could exist or not exist at any second — having an office space really was the very first time that felt like, ‘We exist and we’re here,’” she said. “So it’s been an emotional loss as well as a physical loss.”

OneValley was also home to Hazelwood-based Garden of Different Abilities. Andrea Coleman-Betts leads the disability advocacy nonprofit. She founded the organization in 2017 in her home on Second Avenue in Hazelwood, but it was not suitable for public events.

In 2023, she rented a “hot desk,” then upgraded to a permanent desk and finally a private office in 2025.

“I needed a stable model to use for myself and invite the community, too,” she wrote in a May 14 email. “The OneValley Roundhouse fit ... and I made a huge investment to be housed there as an ADA-compliant space, safe for me, as well as others.”

“It was a nice building and I felt safe there,” she said during a June 8 call. “I could get there in maybe 10 minutes and get back home. I could come dressed as I was, anytime I felt like it, 24-hour access anytime I wanted to work.”

Losing it has been a blow.

“This is a huge downfall for me and others in and out of this community,” she wrote in the May 14 email. “Over the years, I took a lot of time and opportunities to upgrade my membership to where it is now. Now it is no more.”

Limited options

Spartan Community Center of Hazelwood at 134 East Elizabeth St. (a sponsor of The Hompage) offers office rental for $275 per month. But both Ms. Quinn and Ms. Coleman-Betts said the building’s lack of an elevator is a problem.

Outside of Hazelwood, the closest coworking space is COhatch in South Side Works. COhatch Community Manager Janita Kilgore said during a June 9 call that OneValley staff contacted the company to let them know about the closing. COhatch created offerings to mirror what OneValley tenants were used to, she said.

But instead of up to eight hours per day of access to a “hot desk,” COhatch offers 20 business hours per month at the starter level, and 80 business hours per month at the part-time level. Copying and scanning are free, but printing is charged per page.

Ms. Quinn said OneValley occupied a “sweet spot” both geographically and with its complimentary printing and conference room space.

“You add those up over the year, and those are those tiny little things that start to pull a budget in a way we weren’t expecting,” she said.

Another Hazelwood coworking solution could be on the horizon, though.

The nonprofit People of Origin Rightfully Loved and Wanted, known as POORLAW, has a project in the works that could address what nonprofits like The Mon Water Project need. In 2023, POORLAW bought the Church of the Good Shepherd on the corner of Second and Johnston avenues in Hazelwood. Part of the plan for the historic building was to rent space to neighborhood nonprofits for offices and meetings.

The church required extensive renovations. Lutual Love, pastor of Praise Temple Deliverance Church, a partner on the project, discussed it during a June 8 phone call. He said the building now has a new roof and new heating and cooling systems.

The building will have wheelchair access and fully accessible bathrooms for both floors, Mr. Love said. The bathrooms are under construction now.

The planned office space on the second floor will have cubicles, a copier and other shared amenities. The lower floor will have a large meeting space and kitchen.

He said the renovations are expected to be finished by the end of the year. Anyone interested in becoming a tenant should call him at 412-726-2890.

OneValley staff and corporate offices did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.