Switchyards - 368 East Whittier Street

Truly bummed to have to give this review. Myself and several others have contacted switch yards, shared Instagram stories, and have made requests over and over again to turn the music down. The idea of switch yards is that it’s supposed to be a space that allows people to do “good work together“. I am someone who has worked in workplace experience, designing offices and creating environments for employee engagement for years. I also happened to DJ on the side. The music here is incredibly loud distracting and unfortunately prohibitive of focused work. Every single person in the location has your buds and whether they are on a call or not because the music is loud and disruptive. There is a quiet room in the basement however you can’t take calls there. There is a limitation on how often you can use the phone booths (I believe there is a three hour max a week). As somebody who is in constant contact with my clients meeting over the phone and virtually having this disruptive sound in the background is unsustainable. When given this feedback, I’ve gotten no better than a “will take this into a consideration“ with no change. Their numbers have dropped since they opened to a status where they are now doing open houses and other events trying to boost membership. If this is truly a coworker, space then why aren’t we creating an environment that allows people to do work. I understand having music on to drown out the sound of people who are actively on calls. Or talking with one another. This is far above and beyond that. Myself and five others that have made the same complaints will all be canceling our memberships. Switchyard seems like they are trying too hard to be cool and not hard enough to actually be a coworker space. All of this to say such a loss because it’s close by inconvenient to me. I’ve been paying the $125 a month for which I will go back to the coffee shop which is quieter to take my calls.

Nice facility. Music is not great. It's not really a club. It's more just a space you can use to work.

Great addition to the neighborhood

Switchyards Columbus is a very nice facility. If you work remotely or want a space outside of office/home to work, I would recommend it. The fact that it's 24/7 is wonderful, especially for a night owl like myself. However, there were a few issues that led to me cancelling my membership. Switchyards doesn't have any large monitors and doesn't allow for them to be brought in. That totally makes sense, I'm sure it'd be a liability, but really narrows the kind of work I can do there. Additionally, the music is always too loud for me; I could always hear the bass over my headphones which I find really overstimulating and distracting. And, for the price of the membership, I would hope for an experience I couldn't get at a coffee shop or a library. If your work style fits Switchyards, I'd recommend it. If you travel a lot, I'm sure having access to Switchyards across the country would be nice. And, again, the facilities are stylish and open 24/7. But, it simply doesn't work for me. I was disappointed to leave, but I couldn't afford a costly membership that I wasn't using enough.

When the only job you have is to take the trash out and refresh coffee, maybe hire less lazy workers. Nothing worse than a company that comes into a neighborhood to hire people who don’t follow the laws and rules in that community. Employees parking in the alley that clearly states no parking.