Photo courtesy of Kaplan Construction

What: The Village Works
Where: 761-773 Centre St., Jamaica Plain
Owner: 769 Centre Street LLC
Built: 2022 

• A historic, 15,000-square-foot retail block in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood has been gut-renovated into a new, 7,500-square-foot coworking space called The Village Works. 

• To accommodate the new tenant, Kaplan Construction installed new insulation and converted the lower level of an adjacent tenant, a hair salon, into a staff breakroom and area for back-of-house operations. A bar for building users was also added to the building’s multi-level, glass-roofed shared courtyard. 
• System upgrades include all-new mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire safety, water service and gas service, and several new windows were cut in the walls and skylights added to the ceiling. Other tenants in the building, including Espresso Yourself, Vee Vee Restaurant, Station 8 Salon, and fashion retailer Salmagundi, received new safety systems as part of the renovation, while the roof and facade were restored and a groundwater recharge system was added to the property. 

They Said It: 

“We are an independent neighborhood co-working space with a goal of supporting our local neighbors and creating a work home away from home. Kaplan took good care of us from the very start and created an amazing high-performance space designed for the health, happiness, and productivity of our members.”
— Lisa Wasserman Sivan, co-founder, The Village Works