Alley (company)


Alley is a privately held company based in New York City that operates coworking spaces in several cities in the United States. Besides its own location, the company operates several offices branded as Alley powered by Verizon, under an agreement with Verizon Communications. In total, Alley operates four locations: two in New York City, and one location each in Washington, D.C., and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

History

Alley was founded by Jason Saltzman, Jonathan Ende and Nsi Obotetukudo in April 2011 as AlleyNYC. The company first began with a location at 500 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, New York, a 15,000-square-feet property in Midtown. However, the coworking space only became popular after Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 which caused flooding and power outages in Lower Manhattan. Saltzman sent an email announcing that AlleyNYC was open and free to anyone in need of an emergency workspace. The message went viral, and hundreds of people showed up to accept his offer. By September 2014, the company had expanded to 55,000 square feet with the addition of a 40,000-square-foot property in Chelsea, Manhattan.
In February 2015, AlleyNYC raised $16 million in a funding series led by Vandewater Capital Holdings along with Entrepreneur Media. The coworking space had grown to over 800 members and was home to about 110 startup companies. In March 2015, the company opened its third location in Manhattan's Flatiron District. This office would occupy three floors of a building located on West 24th Street. Saltzman announced that the location would serve as Alley's flagship location. The newest space, located in Chelsea, was the first to be professionally designed by an architectural firm, Echo Design + Architecture.
Alley announced an agreement with Verizon to develop a number of coworking spaces under the name "Alley powered by Verizon". In June 2017, the company opened two new locations under the Verizon-powered brand. One was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while the second was set in Washington, D.C. on L Street NW. Through the same agreement, Alley also operates a coworking space in Alley's Chelsea flagship location specifically catering to companies researching the intersection between 5G wireless communication and virtual reality technology. The Chelsea facility was split into a portion exclusively operated by Alley and another operating as "powered by Verizon".