When Levi and Jessie Benkert from local development firm LJ Urban decided to leave their Midtown business and pack up their families to start an orphanage in Ethiopia, something had to be done with their workspace until 2010. When Brandon Weber, marketing consultant to LJ Urban, found out about the company's hiatus and downsizing, he wanted to make the warehouse building into a co-working space, and he posted the idea on his blog.

Meanwhile, James Pierini and his friend Janna Santoro, who had been working on bringing co-working to Sacramento, were looking for other work-at-home professionals who would be interested in sharing a physical office space, when they came across Weber's blog. Roughly six weeks ago, these three people got together, realized the great potential in this opportunity, since LJ Urban's space and even some of their furniture was just sitting there, and they acquired the space.

The Urban Hive was born and has been buzzing ever since.

"People who are here now are basically people who heard through word of mouth," said Weber of the space, which just last night held a meetup called Green Drinks, an informal monthly event where people in the environmental field meet up for drinks. The event was sponsored by Green Sacramento, an environmental building and products consultant, and one of the the Urban Hive's tenants.

The Urban Hive has also held such public events as Cereal Creative, a public event to promote a creative environment where participants network over their favorite bowls of cereal, and Buzz Night, an informal after-work social event where participants have a cold brew and stimulating conversation before heading home.

"We had [Cereal Creative] as kind of a brainstorming session, where people come and we had a question that people would discuss," Pierini said. "The question was, 'What can co-working be?' We wanted to get people in the community and see what co-working could mean to them."

"We're likely to leave at 4:30 and crack a beer," said Weber of Urban Hive's working environment. "The goal is to create a collaborative environment — it's a community."

"Basically there are three sections to this warehouse building," Pierini said. "The front section is the Urban Hive, the middle section is Green Sacramento, and in the back we have some artist studios with individual spaces associated with VOX Sacramento [art cooperative]."

Conference rooms, private spaces and hallways fill in the rest of the space. The building is replete with solid steel tables that weigh over 1,000 pounds, artwork and boxes of cereal for Cereal Creatives, but Weber still plans to knock down a wall and create an entire kitchen with an island, so working professionals will visit the office instead of the coffee shop.

"On the scale of coffee shop to office, it feels more like a coffee shop," said Weber, who mentioned that coffee is served in all offices, but French-pressed Old Soul coffee is served at the Urban Hive.

This Second Saturday, VOX will be holding SHE, the third annual women's show benefitting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, displaying art and musical acts such as Ricky Berger and Reggie Gin.

"We not only want this to be something that the community at large embraces so someone who's not a co-worker can be a part of what we're doing here," Pierini said. "We want businesses to come over here and feel like they can spend the day out of the office, and use our space for a brainstorming day. It could be a benefit to everyone."

Instead of seeing Sacramento's other co-working space Capsity Offices (see previous Sacramento Press article) as a competitor, the two have teamed up and have been working closely on some shared events, like an office swap, where each office visits the other office.

"I think that Sacramento has a great culture for co-working, and this is just the beginning of all of it," Pierini said.

The Urban Hive is located at 1931 H St.