Western student, Dylan Green, co-founds community renewal project that makes space for change by giving entrepreneurs the opportunity to prosper

STORY BY ASHLEY HIRUKO | PHOTOS BY BEATRICE HARPER

( Above) Hatch Co-Founder and Western Student, Dylan Green, stands in a Hatch space in downtown Bellingham
An intimate group works on their breathing. They move from mountain pose, standing straight with their heels slightly apart, down to forward fold. In the front of the room is Adrienne Renée, a petite brunette with hair tied back in a bun.

Renée is leading a yoga class at a Hatch space in downtown Bellingham. The building is small and rectangular, nestled modestly next to a bail bonds company and across the street from the jail. In the window hangs a ‘For Lease’ sign; a common trend for the buildings on the block.

Renée, a Fairhaven student, dreams of owning her own practice space in the future. Hatch gives her a place to call her own, at least temporarily.

Hatch is a community-driven city renewal project that works to help find tenants for the vacant buildings of downtown by bringing entrepreneurs in. The buildings are used as creative hubs.

Renée has been partnering with Hatch since summer 2015. She learned about the project while training Nick Hartrich, Executive Director of the Downtown Bellingham Partnership. He told her about Hatch and what it had to offer.

Dylan Green, a 23-year-old Western student, is the co-founder and director for Hatch. He has dedicated himself to his work with Hatch by spending months refurbishing the spaces they currently maintain.

It all began when Green met Hartrich through a mutual friend spring 2015. Hartrich brought up his idea for a business incubator. Green was just starting the entrepreneurship minor at Western and saw a correlation between the two. They talked ideas and about the overall feasibility of creating the project.

On July 7, Hartrich and Green started work on the first location of Hatch, a small vacant building on Commercial Street, and doors opened Sept. 4, 2015.

Since then, Hatch has been continuously providing for the community.

The vacancy rate in Downtown Bellingham stands at four percent, dropping from 11 percent in 2011, according to Lindsey Payne, Events Manager for the Downtown Bellingham Partnership. In 2015 alone, 46 new business licenses were issued for downtown.

Renée says she likes the versatility the building has to offer. There is no sign of yoga being practiced in the room until she occupies the space.

“It doesn’t have to be this perfect serene thing,” Renée says. “You don’t have to have your Lululemon head to toe and your fancy mat and all this whatever.”

She is just one of three hatchlings currently partnering with the organization. Among the others are Cayley Schmid and Avielle Heath. Schmid has been holding various music classes in the space as a part of the Bellingham Folk School. Heath, a recent addition, plans on using the space to draw attention to the film industry in Bellingham.

“We’ve gotten folks who have come through the doors with obscure workout machines that they’ve patented in the early 90s,” Green says. “Another guy took this ring off of his finger, lined it with wet toilet paper and put a small rock into the middle … He was showing us how it can create electricity, how he wanted to create a battery of that.”

The application given to prospective Hatchlings asks simple questions. Questions like, “How long has this idea been going on?” Green says the questions are meant to weed out people who aren’t serious.

Hatchlings are required to pay a fee of $150 per month. Another way to be sure they’re willing to invest money into their business.

“People want to go into a space and feel inspired and they want to be able to feel as if there’s resources in their environment so that they can start their business,” Green says. “I think that’s what Hatch is trying to really strike on — creating the space and supporting entrepreneurs and telling them ‘you’re not alone in this community, there’s a place for you. It’s within this community and we can help you start your idea’.”

Although this nearly vacant building may not seem like much, to Green, Hartrich and Hatchlings like Renée it’s something spectacular. It’s a place to be, a place to prosper.