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The collaborative meeting spaces and offices of Impact Hub have made their way into Santa Barbara — coffee and Internet included.
People and organizations can rent out the rooms, offices and desks via a monthly membership fee, said Dan Ferrick, a co-founder of the new location.
Impact Hub was founded in Europe and maintains locations around the world, including ones in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley.
The Santa Barbara location isn’t a franchise, Ferrick explained, but was founded separately as part of the greater Impact Hub network and is allowed to use the organization’s name and branding. The lead investor has been Paul Orfalea, the local philanthropist and founder of Kinko’s.
After moving from Boulder, Colorado and seeing that Santa Barbara was lacking large, comprehensive “co-working, collaborative spaces,” Ferrick saw it as the perfect opportunity to fill a niche.
“There’s a lot of tech here, there’s a big startup community, there are a lot of entrepreneurs,” he said.
Additionally, a variety of community events, talks, demonstrations, activities and even corporate parties will be hosted on site.
Impact Hub Santa Barbara, located at 1117 State St., has three floors of personal work spaces, offices, conference rooms, and a tech lounge, along with a kitchen, an outdoor patio and, eventually, a small restaurant and bar named Satellite, which will serve both Impact Hub’s clientele and State Street.
Wine events and catering services on site will begin fairly soon, Impact Hub tenant Drew Cuddy, who is opening Satellite, told Noozhawk.
“Our biggest target market is people who are working in coffee shops or in their home office, and they need a sense of community,” Ferrick said.
“You need people to bounce ideas off of. There are also some business partnerships that are formed by coming to work, and you never know who you’re going to bump into.”
After signing up, Ferrick said, users receive an app that lets them into the building to use their space.
Right now, however, Impact Hub has its doors open all day for people who want to check it out.
De la Vina Street’s American Fuel closes up shop
When customers walked into 2234 De la Vina St.’s American Fuel, a purchase was more than just a transaction, but a quick opportunity to chat and catch up with the proprietor, Omar Belazi.
But after 16 years of getting to know his patrons, Belazi is closing up the gas station he founded, for reasons he didn’t want to discuss.
Belazi told Noozhawk that he has no plans yet for what he’ll do after he flicks off the lights for the final time, but does look forward to spending a few weeks with his family.
He described the transition optimistically as an opportunity to start a new chapter is his life and see what’s available for him to spend his time on.
After Friday, a new gas station will take the place of American Fuel, which sits at De la Vina’s intersection with West Pueblo Street and is known for its relatively cheap gas.
After moving to Santa Barbara from Libya four decades ago, Belazi opened his own Radio Shack store and a different De la Vina gas station before establishing American Fuel.
Resonant earns its 100th patent
Four years after its founding, Goleta tech company Resonant has notched its 100th patent.
The company, located at 110 Castilian Dr., designs filters for radio frequency front-ends for mobile phones and handsets, and had its initial public offering in 2014.
The milestone reflects the company’s accelerating growth, said Mike Eddy, Resonant’s vice president of corporate business development and marketing.
“As we focus more on the higher-performance designs, we’re looking at more and more innovation that needs to be protected,” he told Noozhawk.
Being the first in the industry to solely design and license these filters without also fabricating them, he said, allows for the attention to design that is necessary to improve the filters’ performance.
Resonant, which employs some 24 people in its Goleta office, earned its 50th patent only a year ago, and earns royalties by licensing its designs out to filter manufacturers.
“It’s an important milestone for us because the value of our licenses is really based around the value of our intellectual property,” Eddy said.
Channel Islands Fiduciary Group opens a new office
Channel Islands Fiduciary Group has opened up an office at 132 E. Figueroa St.
The fiduciary business has been growing as the Baby Boomer generation retires, the group’s founder, Courtney DeSoto, told Noozhawk. There are about five or six active fiduciaries in town, she said.
The new office became necessary after the two-year-old business outgrew her home office, she added, and the new location has come in handy being in the immediate vicinity of the Superior Court, where she had previously worked as an investigator and still goes to on behalf of some of her clients.
Fiduciaries, DeSoto explained, serve in a number of capacities for folks who need someone to look after some of their needs. They can take on a range of legal, social, and other duties on their client’s behalf.
“I hate to make it sound not that exciting, but we’re kind of like professional adult children,” she said.
“We do for our clients what you would do for your parents when they are aging: We take care of them, we make sure they go to the doctor, and that their prescriptions are filled, and their taxes are done — all the little day-to-day things that some people don’t have others around to help them with.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.