While mega hotels are sprouting like dandelions on the north end of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, go further down the street, just beyond the Interstate 16 flyover, and you’ll find a more curious empire quietly taking root.
Called The Guild Hall, the campus of four buildings spans almost three city blocks between MLK and Montgomery — bounded by Gaston and Huntingdon streets — two corridors that have experienced more than their fair share of neglect over the last few decades.
View more photos from inside The Guild Hall
Officially launched in September, the clubhouse includes a startup incubator, office space, vacation rentals, gaming lounge, a small theater and makerspace with woodworking tools, a 3-D printer and sewing machines. A makerspace is a place where people gather to share resources and knowledge and work on projects.
And all of that’s only the beginning.
The Guild Hall is the brainchild of business partners Clegg Ivey and Jacob Heider, both transplants to Savannah, who say their goal is to build a community for creative individuals of all stripes.
“I love starting companies, but I also love to help people realize their dreams,” said Ivey, a former attorney and startup maven. “It was kind of these two ideas, this incubator idea and basically this place where creative folks could get together and hang out.”
“Clegg and I aren’t special in how we interact with the world,” said Heider of The Guild Hall’s various offerings. “On the contrary, lots of creative individuals enjoy many cross-disciplinary things.”
Ivey said they’ve invested about $2.5 million in the Guild Hall and have set aside more as they continue to grow. That growth includes the future construction of two two-story buildings on the gravel lot off Eli and Montgomery streets, which will house a new theater and makerspace.
These buildings will take the place of the metal structure now housing a building dubbed The Forge, the current makerspace at 515 Montgomery St., which will be torn down and replaced by a four-story, 59-unit apartment building from Charlotte-based development firm Lat Purser & Associates.
The land the campus sits on is owned by Walter O. Evans, the retired surgeon and businessman, who is known for his extensive collection of African-American art.
Evans invested in the property along MLK and Montgomery several years ago with development plans that were stymied by the economic downturn and other issues. Although reticent to be interviewed, Evans did express support for Ivey’s plans. Ivey, in turn, said Evans had been receptive to his outside-the-box ideas from the get-go.
“He cared. He wasn’t just looking for tenants,” Ivey said. “He was really looking for someone who had a vision. …The neighborhood is going to get a real visual lift.”
Each building on their campus has its own name — The Arena, The Forge, The Foundry, The Bower and The Atrium — pertaining to its function in the community. There are six guilds in all, dedicated to gamers, makers, coders, designers, performers and storytellers.
Memberships run between $10 and $100 a month depending on a person’s interest level, with access to most of the buildings and amenities, including computer labs, an outdoor courtyard and private rooms in which to play a rigorous game of Dungeons & Dragons.
After just four months in business, their membership has already grown to more than 300 people through mostly word of mouth.
Asked if he considered himself a developer, Ivey was ambivalent.
“I’m not a big developer who’s trying to make a big splash and make a lot of money,” he said. “What I want to do is build a community. Since there’s already a community here, I want to build one that works within the existing community.”
He said he hopes that when people talk about Savannah, they’ll eventually talk about The Guild Hall, too.
“This is where I want to work and play until I’m too old,” he said, laughing.
Origin story
Originally from the Gulf south, Ivey began his post-college career in Silicon Valley during the dot-com bubble of the late ’90s, early ’00s.
As a former intellectual property and antitrust attorney, Ivey worked as patent counsel for heavy hitters such as Google, Apple and Netscape. His two biggest cases included the notorious Microsoft antitrust suit and the early fight between MP3 players and the recording industry.
“I was a zealot,” Ivey said. “If you asked me what I did in the late ’90s, I was a religious warrior fighting Microsoft, who I thought was evil.”
After a few courtroom victories and serving as an adviser to several startups, Ivey wanted in on the action himself.
“I was tired of being in all these meetings with all these guys and gals that were creating things,” he said. “I wanted to be in the room; I wanted to help build things.”
Utilizing his knowledge of programming and the legal world, Ivey spent most of the early ’00s launching and running a slew of startups, including an energy drink company, where he made most of his money.
In 2006, after Ivey had moved to Orlando to revive a former startup of his called Voxeo, he met Heider, a computer programmer and engineer.
The two became friends and would eventually form Forge(X), the umbrella corporation that houses their various business ventures, including The Guild Hall, represented by its ubiquitous dragon mascot and logo.
Heider said they mostly agree on the direction and outcomes of their business but use different processes to arrive there.
“I won’t go so far as to describe myself as ‘coldly logical,’ but as the computer scientist and software engineer, I have a particular affinity for process and efficiency,” Heider said. “We spend a lot of time brainstorming, both at work and out, when we’re working on solutions to problems or developing opportunities that arise.”
In 2008, Ivey met his future wife, Anna, a Savannah native, who convinced Ivey to make the move to the Hostess City.
Never one to idle, Ivey began a food delivery service called Savannah To Go! and a bakery on Whitemarsh Island called Cake It Away. He said building those two brick-and-mortar companies taught him a valuable lesson on starting a business in Savannah.
“It helped me understand things like how important it is to work with the city, your neighbors, and how important is that people around you are on board with what you’re doing,” he said.
In 2013, the idea for The Guild Hall really began to take shape, according to Heider, who, by this point, had also relocated to Savannah.
Ivey said the idea was influenced by his experience in Silicon Valley during the late ’90s.
“When I was doing startups, you were at the office all the time and to make it livable and not go insane, we had a big breakroom with console games, big screen TVs, a pool table and snack room with everything from Pop Tarts to Cheerios,” he said.
In 2014, Ivey and Heider signed the lease on their first building and had a grand opening that attracted several hundred people.
A startup that helps startups
Both co-founders say they hope their startup, The Guild Hall, becomes part of a story about how Savannah is a good city to start a company.
In November, the pair made their first six-figure investment in a company called Quickit, now headquartered at The Guild Hall, which is developing a mobile app to make paying parking tickets easier. Quickit plans to launch its first app in the first quarter of this year.
“In five years, I hope we have several companies that started at The Guild Hall that are real and have gotten venture capital so people can see that The Guild Hall is more than fun and games,” said Ivey.
With the building of a new makerspace, they plan to add metalworking in addition to other types of fabrication their members can work on.
“Every time a member comes to me with an idea for a product or service they want to create … it’s validation that this business was completely necessary,” Heider said.
That includes the performers’ and storytellers’ guilds, which began as conversations with Justin Kent and Christopher Soucy of Savannah’s improv group Odd Lot. The improv group has two shows a month there.
Claire Sandow was an early member and recently finished a woodworking class where she made a small table.
“I joined because of the board game selection and general nerdy atmosphere,” she said. “The Forge was an added bonus (because) it let me learn how to use power tools like a miter saw that I otherwise found intimidating or cost-prohibitive.”
What’s next
Next door to The Atrium at 518 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Ivey has taken over the lease for the space formerly occupied by Bub-Ba-Q and plans to launch a gamer pub called The Chromatic Dragon.
He and Heider launched a Kickstarter campaign this week, hoping to raise $20,000 to reconfigure the restaurant to accommodate both grub and video games, modeled after similar concepts in Chicago and Vancouver.
Upstairs, Ivey plans to convert available apartments into vacation rentals as well, mimicking the sci-fi and fantasy-themed units above The Atrium that he currently rents on VRBO.com.
Those units, dubbed Stark Tower and Tower of the Hand, a “Game of Thrones” reference, have bedrooms with décor that pays homage to “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” “The Hobbit” and “Doctor Who,” among other pop culture memes.
“I’m firmly planted with a foot in each world,” said Ivey on whether he favors science fiction or fantasy more. “But if you held a gun to my head: fantasy.”
By the time they’re finished, Ivey estimates their campus will cover about 32,000 square feet of space. Working with local architect Jim Wubbena, Heider said they’ve been very sensitive to making sure their new buildings are complementary to the community.
“We’ve worked with the Historic Review Board all throughout this process to make sure our campus is both attractive and additive to the Historic District,” Heider said. “Our current expansion plans, revised with (historic board) input, should go before the board this month.”
With so many balls in the air, Ivey said he knows it can appear that he has a short attention span.
“People always used to say about me, ‘God, you seem to be all over the place,’” Ivey said. “But it doesn’t feel that way. I feel like there’s a unifying theme to everything I’ve done.”
He said that theme is helping give creative people the tools they need to realize their vision — and have fun while doing it. Not that this doesn’t involve some risk. Ivey said he learned from his father, an avid poker player, to never bet more than you’re willing to lose.
“I think now is the time for this idea, so I’m not afraid to bet on this,” Ivey said. “I feel like The Guild Hall, for Savannah and for my members, I feel like it’s a winning hand. So I’m pushing all my chips on the table.”
For more information on memberships, visit the theguildhall.com