The Hive at 55 and LMHQ: Supporting a Changing Downtown Community

It’s our 30th anniversary, and we’re self-celebrating. Over the next few months, we’ll be rolling out 30 stories about 30 of our biggest accomplishments, including everything from our daily public safety and sanitation work, to our small business outreach, to how we helped the neighborhood navigate challenges and even tragedies. You’ll be able to find these stories on our website, as well as in our weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. 

Over the last 20-plus years, Lower Manhattan has transitioned from a 9-to-5 financial district into a 24/7 neighborhood catering to a diverse range of industries, including creative, media, design and architecture and tech. As the neighborhood’s office demographics began to change, the Downtown Alliance sought ways to foster the newly growing diversified worker community. 

First, in December 2009, we launched the Hive at 55, a 4,000-square-foot, fully outfitted coworking facility at 55 Broad St. that that provided shared workspace and support to small businesses, freelancers and entrepreneurs. At the time, it was an innovative concept, pre-dating the vast expansion of coworking spaces across the globe. In just a few years, the Hive at 55 attracted hundreds of members while helping businesses develop and grow. 

With the success of the Hive at 55, we looked for more ways to support different industries downtown. As the tech industry grew in the neighborhood, in 2013 we introduced LaunchLM, a community initiative designed to care for, connect and attract tech businesses, predominantly by offering programming like lectures, networking events and happy hours for downtown tech denizens.

In 2015, these two initiatives came together as LMHQ, a cross-sector collaboration space at 150 Broadway created to foster the ongoing evolution of Lower Manhattan into a bustling tech and creative center. The 12,500-square-foot space included a 140-seat event space, conference rooms, phone booths and customizable workspaces with plug-and-play flexibility. Memberships were offered at more reasonable rates than local competitors, and LMHQ offered a robust slate of programming intended to gather and engage, industry professionals. 

The Women’s Breakfast Series, which launched shortly after LMHQ’s inception, served as the flagship programming event, offering monthly panels featuring women leaders in a wide range of industries as well as networking opportunities over bagels and coffee. We also offered private professional development workshops, collaborative programming with outside organizations and even a partnership with HarperCollins for author events. LMHQ also teamed up with ConEdison for the Bright Ideas grant program, which gave NYC nonprofits the opportunity to use LMHQ’s event space and meeting rooms for free. 

LMHQ had to shift to virtual programming at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. This ended up being a boon for LMHQ, which expanded its attendee base and community internationally, giving the Downtown Alliance the opportunity to cast its brand even further than Lower Manhattan. In 2022, the Alliance made the decision to close the physical LMHQ space at 150 Broadway, but LMHQ’s community events live on as LM Live; read all about it here. 

photo: LMHQ