The Gathering Spot is expanding.
The networking hub and co-working space will build their fourth location in Houston, Texas, according to the club’s co-founder and CEO Ryan Wilson.
Wilson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Houston represented “the next best opportunity for us as a community.”
The Gathering Spot (TGS) opened its first club in Atlanta eight years ago this month and has since opened locations in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. It also has five “connected cities” — Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Houston and New York — which are communities that gather for events and programming, just not at a TGS club. Houston is one of the largest connected cities.
“We’re walking into a community that’s already been thriving for two years with 350 folks that believe in the mission,” Wilson said. “We’ll be really proud to join that community with a physical site.”
He and his team are still in the process of selecting the building that will house TGS Houston, but he said he hopes to have the location open by this time next year.
Before deciding on Houston, Wilson traveled to all five connected cities and toured potential buildings with members of that city’s community. He said Houston is a large, diverse, cultural capital and a place where big business and small business coexist like Atlanta.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
The expansion comes three months after Wilson and his co-founder T’Keel “TK” Petersen announced they were splitting from Greenwood, the Atlanta-based digital banking platform that acquired the club in 2022. The split followed a public spat last summer between the two companies that ended up in court.
TGS lost over a quarter of their members between July and September last year because of the turmoil with Greenwood. In December, they had around 12,000 members across the U.S., still down from their peak of 15,000.
Since December, TGS has gained about 2,200 members, some of whom are people returning to the club after the founders’ reacquisition, according to Wilson. Currently, members under 30 pay $100 per month, or $1,000 annually, while members over 30 pay double.
Wilson said the past few months have been an “interesting season” for the club and that the team has been drilling down on “restoring the focus that the business historically has had around the audience, the community that’s at TGS.”
But Wilson’s view of community isn’t insular, limited to what is happening within the walls of his clubs. He is also looking at developments in the business and political realms and how it could impact the TGS community.
Over the past few months, the clubs’ programming and events have been focused on involving members in three issues:
- Scaling Black-owned businesses within the communities that TGS serves
- Advocating for diversity, equity and inclusion as lawsuits and legal threats against the initiatives have increased
- Participating in politics, particularly with the upcoming 2024 election
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Since January, TGS Atlanta has played host to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and three cabinet secretaries, and members have had a chance to speak with the officials.
“We take serious the responsibility that we have as a community of leveraging all of the good people that have been brought together through The Gathering Spot to do some real good,” Wilson said. “We are in a unique position as an organization to make an impact and we plan on delivering on what I see as a mandate at this point.”
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