Today, the marketing and creative agency Brains on Fire announced that it has closed on two adjoining properties at 1249 and 1257 Pendleton St. in the Village of West Greenville. Following extensive renovations, the company plans to move in at the beginning of 2018.
The properties sit between the Village Grind on the western side and Sixpence Salon and Spa to the east. Together, they total 5,333 square feet
Brains on Fire is working with McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture on the design of the new space. Brandy Amidon, Brains on Fire CFO for 12 years, says the interior design is about 50 percent complete, and they have not yet reached a consensus on making the two storefronts one in appearance or not. The interior will remain one singular space regardless.
The 25-plus creatives will be leaving their current home, the Innovate building at 148 River St., and work out of the Village of West Greenville’s Atlas Local co-working space from August to December.
“We were in the Innovate building for 16 years and at the beginning it was still a part of downtown that was rough,”Amidon says. “We were able to be a part of that story. We contributed a lot to the growth of the area.”
Amidon says after leasing their current location for many years, owning a space had become a priority for the whole team.
“We didn’t want it to be generic,” she says. “We wanted it to have purpose and to be a part of the community as it grows.”
The Village of West Greenville is currently being redeveloped, adding new restaurants like GB&D, the Anchorage, and Growler Haus, revitalizing the Brandon Mill property, and fostering a growing arts community. The neighborhood is also home to Community Journals, the parent company of Upstate Business Journal and Greenville Journal.
Unlike Brains on Fire’s current rectangular, completely open workspace, the new location will have distinct work areas and a variety of workspaces, all circling around a central multi-use creative space, which is something Amidon says they were looking for.
“You’re in front of everybody all day long, and sometimes you don’t want to be,” she says of the current space.
McMillan Pazdan Smith is using the building’s unusual interior layout as inspiration for the final design.
“The existing building is made up of several sections that were constructed at different times, all with their own floor levels and quirkiness,” says Cary Perkins, architect and associate of McMillan Pazdan Smith. “We’ve used this to set up some order to the space. The plan lays out loose zones of different space types – cozy, open, noisy, quiet – for various types of work. These are arranged around the Creative Lab and gathering space at the heart of the office. Collaboration and individual work can happen anywhere but most importantly, there are options and flexibility.”
The center creative space may be open to the public as Brains on Fire seeks to work with the community.
“We don’t want to cut ourselves off from the community,” Amidon says.
She says the team, many of which work remotely on certain days of the week, will use the next five months working from Atlas Local to acquaint themselves with their new neighbors.
