Street, with prime views of the East River, the space formerly was an internal training center for Goldman Sachs. But, except for oak paneling and glossy terrazzo floors deemed too gorgeous to
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remove, Sentry Centers is, in the words of company founder Chris Kelly, “starting absolutely from scratch” — ripping up carpet, carting away outdated technology, and knocking down walls — as it turns the training center into a 20,000-square-foot, state- of-the-art conference and meeting facility. The makeover, however, goes far beyond a physical renovation. In planning the
new space, Sentry undertook a design process that deconstructed the idea of meetings themselves, breaking them down into their component parts and putting them back together in a flexible framework to support how people really work today. Even the very definition of “meetings” was up for reinvention. “We understood that people weren’t coming to us to have a meeting, which is a
common misperception,” Kelly said. “People are actually coming to us because they need to get something done”— learning new information, for example, or making an important decision. “We’re looking at ourselves not as a conference center, but as a destination where these types of collaborations can occur.”
‘ASK, OBSERVE, AND ENGAGE’ The space at 32 Old Slip is the third Manhattan conference center developed by Sentry Centers, which Kelly and partner Ryan Simonetti founded in 2009. Convene toured the space, which was under construction, on a rainy, windy Friday morning in mid-October — its opening, then scheduled for early 2013, will be delayed because of extensive damage that the 32 Old Slip building sustained during Superstorm Sandy. Kelly and Simonetti lease commercial office
space and then renovate it, adding best-in-class services such as food-and-beverage, technology, and meeting planning. Their model, which capi- talizes on the trend of corporations outsourcing meetings to off-site venues, has quickly gained traction: More than 70 percent of the Fortune 500 companies based in New York City, Kelly said, have held meetings in Sentry’s first two centers, located on the Upper East Side and in Midtown Manhattan. Elements of the first two centers reflect Sen-
try’s user-centered approach to design, but the new space will be the first one in the company’s
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portfolio to fully carry out that vision. What will set 32 Old Slip apart, Kelly said, “is that every single aspect of the entire experience, from aes- thetics to technology to food-and-beverage to [cli- ent] brand positioning, has been created from this place.” He added: “We really studied the meeting attendee and our core customer, the meeting plan- ner. We’re taking a very user-centered approach to pretty much everything we do — not only from a physical-design perspective, but also from a pro- cesses and services perspective.” Sentry has been working with design and inno-
vation consultant Joyce Bromberg, founder of The Bromberg Group and former director of research for the office-furniture manufacturer Steelcase Inc., where she led teams that studied workplace environments in industries including health care, banking, and education. Bromberg, who began consulting with Sentry Centers as it planned the opening of its second space, is teamed up with designer Michael E. Fazio, a principal at ARCHI- DEAS, an architecture and design firm, where he is director of the interior design group. Bromberg
t’s not as if the latest space taken over by New York City–based Sentry Centers — the second floor of the 32 Old Slip office building in Manhattan’s Financial District — was shabby to begin with. Just a few blocks from Wall