STA started off the new year with a lot of excitement, and positive change! A few weeks ago, we
moved to a new STA home. After ten years in the Seaport / Innovation District (which wasn’t
called that back when we moved there!), we are now in the heart of the city of Boston, at 125
Broad Street. Creating a new home, and the process of moving to a new space, was an exciting
and eye-opening experience for our firm. What we do for our clients every day – guide them
through visioning their goals and space, identify their quantifiable and qualitative needs, help
them think about how they work today, and how they could work to improve productivity and
happiness – we now were doing for ourselves. As expert as we are in this process, it’s not as
easy when you look inward – there’s a bit of psychology and soul-searching that goes along with
the process!
So with the help of the entire STA team, we have created a space that reflects the culture and
needs of STA today. We worked together as a team to think about our workspace, our image,
how we work together best, how our work styles and tools have changed over the last ten years,
how our clients and partners experience the space, and our overall health and wellness.
Our new space is amazing (if we do say so ourselves), and working great for us! Here are some
of the key features:
- Let’s start with the location – we are on the end of Broad that is right on the Greenway.
We are a short walk from several T stops, making the commute much easier. Even in
these winter months, we’ve been able to enjoy the beauty of the Greenway, taking walks
and trying the food trucks at lunch.
- Our downtown location makes it much more convenient to get to many of our clients and
meetings, and we are walking more!
- If you’d been to our last office, you know we had an incredible view of the harbor. Our
new office also has an incredible view, of the Greenway, and a new perspective of the
harbor
- We occupy the entire top floor of our building, beautifully naturally lit through windows
and skylights. The space has existing brick walls and exposed beams, a palette rich
in warmth and texture, to which we integrated new maple floors, white furniture and our
signature red
- We’ve been specifying adjustable height desks for our clients for some time, and it was
time for us to reap the benefits! I love to look across the office landscape and see
everyone’s desk at their own personal levels – it never looks the same twice!
- Our new desks are a smaller workspace footprint than our last office, but we’ve
increased the number and variety of shared spaces. The result is that everyone is up
and out of their desks more often, collaborating with each other at one of several
common work areas.
- The main collaboration space is the living lab. While we had a common living lab space
at our last office, the living lab at 125 is a spectacular space, with a killer view, wired for
easy technology, large enough to accommodate the whole office. We meet there, we eat
there, we entertain there, we chill out there!
- One of the biggest changes in new space is the massive reduction in paper. 10 years
ago, work was much more paper intensive – we printed everything, we saved everything
we printed – sometimes in files, sometimes in piles. After an epic purge, we set new
standards for what is printed and saved. We reduced our file storage capacity by about
75%!
- While we bought some new furniture for our new office, we were able to donate a great
majority of our existing furniture to clients and friends!
- Our new office continues the tradition of fresh fruit from Boston Organics, and
composting by Bootstrap Compost
Special thanks to Deb Stevens and Amanda Snell at The Stevens Group, Peter Walsh at
Citywide Contracting, Keith Smith at Creative Office Pavilion, Bill Zimmerman at Milliken, and
Collin Thomas at Reflex Lighting for finding, building and furnishing our new space, and to
Earthworm Recycling and Spry Moving for helping us with the purge and move! Come visit!
– Felice Silverman
