New Spaceworks Platform Taking Off Boston Office A Plus

BOSTON — Stuart T. Hodas, President of Spaceworks Architectural Interiors (SAI), wants to be clear on one essential point regarding his company. “We are not in the furniture business,
because this is not furniture.”

Hodas describes his firm an “architectural interiors dealer,” something he deems an important differentiator from what other companies currently in the business of providing movable, re-usable walls do. “The modular walls industry has really been provided by the furniture manufacturers. Beginning with Steelcase, (office furniture providers) all thought they had to be in the wall business, so the walls were being sold primarily by the furniture guys,” Hodas asserts. “We tout ourselves as being in the construction business and only in the construction business, and we behave like a contractor.” Spaceworks AI’s website describes theiroperation as “turnkey solution for interior fit-out,” and in addition to providing the aforementioned moveable architectural walls, the company provides glass office storefronts, pre-finished side walls, acoustic controls and access flooring incorporating modular electrical, data and
cable systems.

But there was a time when Spaceworks Was in the furniture business. The company founded as a Waltham based office furniture provider in 1999 began selling modular wall systems in 2002, and remained a furniture distributor until 2006, when Hodas transformed the company to an architectural interiors-only concern. Hodas made another major move with his company in May of 2011—this time a geographical one—relocating the business to 263 Summer St. in Boston to be closer to the targeted downtown customer base.
“We wanted to be near the architectural firms and end users, and we didn’t have that in Waltham, so we just figured this is where we needed to be,” explains Hodas. “I think it was very important, and I think some of the large clients that we (landed) lately we might have had a hard time getting if we weren’t downtown.”

Hodas credits the move in picking up at least two clients, Pearson Education (a pilot installation at 501 Boylston) and the Rezolve Group, which just finished a 6,500 sf interior fit out at 2 Oliver St. in the Financial District. The work for Pearson led to another (just completed) project for the digital textbook provider’s offices in Manhattan, as well as two additional
upcoming projects. “And the Rezolve project was definitely a result of being downtown,” says Hodas, “because the broker new me, brought the client over here, and it would be very difficult to get a (downtown) broker to bring his clients out to Waltham.”

But it wasn’t only their location that closed the Rezolve deal, Hodas relays in giving the “unique NXTWall system” which uses European-designed, stick built, pre-finished dry wall products that he says “prices out the same as traditional drywall but requires no mud, paint or taping,”,and allows contractors to shave weeks off build out time. Hodas also touts the glass and aluminum ancillary products that they deliver as state of the art in terms of noise reduction. “We had very specific design specifications to meet our aesthetic and acoustic needs,” relays Robert Reeder, President of the Rezolve Group. “The Spaceworks AI product allowed us to configure the space exactly as we wanted, and well within our schedule
and cost requirements.”

But the move to Summer Street in the Seaport District is not limiting Spaceworks AI to the downtown Boston market. The largest corporate account to date for the company is Aetna, where they have done extensive work in their Hartford headquarters and are just getting underway (with Jones Lang LaSalle handling project management duties) on a fit out at the Offices at River’s Edge in Medford, in a relocation of Aetna operations from Cambridge.

SAI has also done a number of projects for Leggat McCall Properties, including their downtown office at 10 Post Office Sq. that was a model for efficiency and flexibility and a just-completed 10,000 sf client build-out at LMP’s 100 Ames Pond in Tewksbury. “They wanted to make sure that 100 percent of what we installed could be re-used, including the drywall, the studs, the tracking, the door frames and doors, because this is a short term lease,” Hodas outlines.

Eric Sheffels, President of Leggat McCall, says the adaptable nature of the SAI system “promotes a tremendous amount of flexibility to reconfigure a space very cheaply and very quickly. In that (North) market, where tenants are typically high growth tenants and where changes occur regularly, it’s a real advantage to us.”