An award-winning serviced office provider is set to open a second site in Stoke-on-Trent following the success of their first location in the city.
BusinessLodge’s new building, Heron House, is set to open in Heron Cross in August and will operate on the same model as Trent House in Fenton, where occupancy rates reached 100 per cent for much of 2024.
Work is currently under way on the Grove Road building, which was originally home to the MEB and more recently occupied by the NHS. Businesses can sign up for a minimum of three months and a maximum of 12.
Since opening Trent House in 2019, BusinessLodge Stoke has helped local and national businesses to grow in Stoke-on-Trent. The building – a former Npower office – was empty for nearly six years before being brought back to life, and is now home to around 70 clients, ranging from one-person start-ups to international brands.
Kate Holt, Managing Director of BusinessLodge, said: “We opened Trent House in 2019 and the Stoke-on-Trent community appreciated that we had invested in good quality office space.
“Even though Covid hit, we still filled up quickly and maintained a good level of occupancy. We’ve been looking for another building for about three years, but we have strict criteria – we didn’t want to open just boring office space. It had to be comparable with Trent House.”
Like Trent House, Heron House will include flexible office space, co-working areas, meeting rooms, hot desks and a virtual office service. The sites are dog-friendly and also feature a gym, showers, EV charging points, a games room and reception services, while tenants also enjoy regular community events like coffee mornings and Easter egg hunts.
Centre Manager Paula Nadin said: “Heron House is quite a tired building – although it has a lot of natural light – and we’re breathing new life into it. People are flabbergasted when they come through the door at Trent House. The vibe of the building is the thing I’m most proud of.
“Heron House will have the same model and share staff with Trent House, and we want to build the same kind of support over there. Our clients often end up collaborating, and there’s a real sense of community, which makes it a safe, supportive and positive place to grow a business.”
Kate added: “We’ve brought clients into Stoke-on-Trent that wouldn’t have taken space here otherwise. One training provider started with a single workstation and now has 20.
“We give people the chance to test the waters in Stoke-on-Trent to see if it works for them, without a long-term commitment. And we believe we help companies retain staff, because it’s a really nice place to be.”
With other BusinessLodge centres in Bury and Widnes, the Stoke-on-Trent team have built a strong reputation, winning the Excellence in Customer Services award at the 2022 Flexible Space Association (FlexSA) awards and reaching the finals again in 2024.
Anyone interested in finding out more about Trent House or Heron House can contact stoke@businesslodge.co.uk.
