What's Next for the Collide Factory Space in FAT Village?

@traviswebster

​Another dispatch from the defunct Collide Factory creative-incubator space in FAT Village comes from Andrew Martineau, who collaborated with Collide owner Travis Webster to try to get the space off the ground.

Martineau is a past president of the Fort Lauderdale branch of the American Advertising Federation. "I wasn't a business partner [in the Collide Factory] on paper, but I was helping with getting the place going," he says. As for Webster's idea of a space where marketing and creative professionals would share resources and clients, Martineau says, "Travis had a Field of Dreams concept. He hoped people would come."

Not enough people did come, and Webster fell behind on his rent. He left the space two weeks ago, and now its future is up for grabs.

When asked last week, FAT Village landlord Doug McCraw said there were promising new tenants lined up to take over the space, which Webster and a few friends extensively renovated. Martineau says that those prospective tenants once considered buying into the Collide Factory vision.

"A lot of people made promises: 'OK, we're going to come in,'" he says. "We spent a couple of months getting the space to a level where they'd be happy." The collaboration never happened.

What's Martineau's interest in all this? He says Webster mentioned to him that he might keep the Collide Factory model running, "if [I was] interested in taking it over."

Now, he says regretfully, "A slew of people are interested in taking over the space."

More people might mean more rent money and more stability for the neighborhood -- especially if a few different tenants subdivide the space, a trapezoidal warehouse near Sistrunk Boulevard. Details are hazy until leases are worked out -- but if the Collide Factory model gets a new lease on life, it probably won't be in FAT Village.

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