Verizon And Grind Open Manhattan Co-Working Space [PHOTOS]

Telecommunications giant Verizon teamed up with Grind to open a new co-working space in New York City. The 10,000 square-foot space is located at 140 West Street in lower Manhattan, across from One World Trade Center inside of Verizon’s old headquarters. Gensler helped design the space.

Co-working spaces are a huge draw to startups who can’t afford expensive commercial real estate space in larger spaces. The shared spaces are large open offices with desks, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, coffee makers and lunchrooms rented for daily, weekly and monthly rates. The new Grind / Verizon venture joins the ranks of NYC’s most popular co-working spaces including AlleyNYC, WeWork, and TechSpace. Grind also has additional locations across NYC and Chicago.

“We believe that working collaboratively with companies like Verizon to build out premiere locations and reach new communities of professionals is the future of coworking,” said David Beale, Grind CEO said in a statement. “Together we will be offering the lower Manhattan community access to an experience that is unparalleled in the co-working market.”

Verizon has continued to dominate telecommunications in NYC. The company has continued to make infrastructure upgrades while boosting its FiOS fiber-based internet services. Teaming up with Grind could help Verizon gain more small business customers.

“We’ve never done anything like this with our portfolio before,” John Vazquez, Verizon’s senior vice president for Global Real Estate said in a statement. “The New York City tech sector is one of the most vibrant in the world and we’re very excited to have some of its most creative entrepreneurs innovating under our own roof starting this week.”

In 2015, Verizon generated nearly $132 billion in revenue. The company employs 177,700 across its operations.