Intentional Design Inc.

Getting used to our new offices

There are a few interesting things about being downtown, positioned between stuffy and dodgy. At the west end of our block is truly the business distrcit; at the east end is the beginning of the dodgy area. Our block is the line where the cultural textures blend. As a result, we’re in an “interesting” neighborhood. We have a Ramada Inn across the street, sandwiched between a used book store – I love MacLeod’s but it’s not for everyone; the type of place where overflow books are piled on the floor at the end of aisles – and a tall, thin “residential” hotel that rents rooms out for, not coincidentally, the highest rent allowance by the government ministry that regulates welfare payments. On the next corner is a youth hostel with an eclectic little coffee shop downstairs. Yet around the corner is a very respectable boutique hotel, The Victorian Hotel, albeit across the street from the Salvation Army homeless shelter, that my desk faces from across the alley. This blending of the old and new, polished and worn, upscale and budget, is also why we have the upscale restaurant, Cassis (where we take clients for lunch), right next to the been-there-forever Smile Diner (where we eat a budget breakfast and is not listed on any web site anywhere). Our building itself, the Penholme Building (named after its intersection of Pender and Homer Streets, no doubt) has its own history, having been a bank, and how housing a prominent architectural firm and about 80 small businesses in offices reminiscent of a vintage office from a private eye movie. Our offices are larger – several of us share about 1,000 square feet, though it seems that only one person is ever actually in the office at any given time, and have character. The most unique feature is the walk-in safe, fully functional. So far, it stores the empty box from the printer and a few old files.

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