The Lake Union Building, home of Thinkspace’s future Seattle co-working space. (Thinkspace Photo)

Co-working company Thinkspace will open up a new space for tech startups next year right in Amazon’s backyard of South Lake Union.

The new 20,000-square-foot space in the Lake Union Building will include a mix of shared office space, co-working, meeting rooms, event space, as well as a lakeside balcony. The new office will kick off with a soft launch in February and March.

The new space represents both an expansion but more a move down the road. The company had a smaller, 5,500-square-foot space in the Fremont neighborhood, about a mile north of the new spot, but it was not large enough to handle demand and Thinkspace decided to shut it down. Members of the Fremont space are working out of a temporary location and will move to the office in South Lake Union, which is close to Amazon, Google’s new campus and many other tech companies.

Thinkspace’s floating platform on Lake Union. (Thinkspace Photo)

Co-working companies like WeWork have popped up all over the Seattle region, aiming to serve as temporary homes for startups just getting off the ground or big companies parachuting in from out of town to build up engineering outposts. Thinkspace is a local company, based in Microsoft’s backyard of Redmond, Wash. It announced plans to expand to Seattle in 2013.

Thinkspace wrote in a press release that its new space stands out from the pack due to the resources it provides startup founders. Thinkspace has coaches on hand who specialize in everything from the technical side of building a product to strategic planning.

Katie Walvatne, chief experience officer at Thinkspace. (Thinkspace Photo)

The company said the office has a “grit and resilience theme.” The application includes a requirement of a minimum 2.7 on the Grit Score Assessment test, which is based on Angela Duckworth’s Grit Scale. Once entrepreneurs make it through the grit screen, the office is loaded with stations where members “can quantifiably and measurably increase their grit and resilience as entrepreneurs push physically, mentally, and emotionally,” the company said.

“This location is for active-minded entrepreneurs who want to train like an Ironman athlete, continue to push their company to it’s potential, and be around mentally tough startup companies.” Katie Walvatne, chief experience officer of Thinkspace said in a statement.

A co-working membership at Thinkspace runs $300 a month, and the office space starts at $1,100 per month for one or two people up to $4,400 for a team of eight.

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