ALX Community - A Rock During The Pandemic

By Maggie Hulkower, Intern with The Patterson Group

Maggie Hulkower is a current senior at Episcopal Highschool in Alexandria, VA. During the month of May, Episcopal offers senior internship opportunities, and Maggie chose to work with The Patterson Group. In addition to being an avid OrangeTheory member at OTF Alexandria, Maggie enjoys spending time with her friends and going outside. Maggie plans to continue her academic career next year at Tulane University. 

ALX Community at the basics is a co-working office that started in 2018. Created and run by Alexandria locals, they value the community around them. ALX Community is built on four pillars, to “work, meet, learn, and give,” says Kelly Grant, COO of ALX. Not only do they provide offices and top tier amenities, but they also take pride in giving back to the city of Alexandria. ALX partners with 155 nonprofits, all with varying causes that they truly care about. Some of these include homeless shelters, domestic violence help, stem programs for girls, breast cancer funding, organizations that help stop systemic racism, and funding scholarships.ALX Community currently has two offices in Old Town Alexandria. Their newest being one with waterfront views, 25,000 square feet, one conference center, 11 meeting rooms, and plenty of event space. ALX even has its own talk series called tALX.

Alexandria is home to many jobs in DC, as well as many nonprofits. ALX Community is the perfect location for those who prefer staying in this area because of the shorter commute and for those with businesses who need meeting space in the heart of Alexandria.

Photo credit: ALX Community 

I had the chance to sit down with Kelly Grant, the COO of the ALX Community, and talk about why it is so important to her. She admires how ALX Community is more than just an office. The pandemic did make it difficult for many businesses to stay afloat; however, ALX Community and their loyal supporters proved to be an extremely proud experience for Kelly. With the new opening of their second location, ALX Community flipped their plans and quickly reconfigured their space to continue to stay open as a safe option. Within a week, they had taken furniture out, moved in barriers, and partnered with a local cleaning company to exceed CDC standards. They installed a top-of-the-line HVAC and ensured safety to prevent the spread. Although not all members came in, ALX Community provided services because they knew people still were in need. They supplied cleaning services, health and wellness programs, and hunger prevention aid throughout the pandemic. Kelly and the team asked themselves, “how do we help?”. In partnership with The Garden, the ALX community came up with the Alexandria Drive-In: a program that introduced 20 movies, provided spaces, gave home to food vendors who would’ve gone out of business, served 12,000 people and gave back 100,000 dollars to nonprofits all with volunteers. Every single person gave time to help because they wanted to find some type of normalcy. The Governor even wrote procedures to ensure the Alexandria Drive-In would happen.

Photo credit: ALX Community 

With the loosening of COVID restrictions but continued remote work, everyone is eager to get out of their homes. ALX community has been the perfect solution to Zoom fever! Even though you could say the end of the pandemic is near, ALX Community will continue to keep these standards. Some health precautions they take are using phones as keys, booking conference rooms, and employing nanoseptic, a hospital-grade cleaning service, all while requiring the same measures the state of Virginia requires.  About 65 percent of ALX Community members are vaccinated, with the others on the way. By tracking everyone that comes in and out of the office and requiring masks inside around others, ALX Community has been respectful, all while making others comfortable in this community.

Photo credit: ALX Community 

People were loyal because ALX Community gave back, giving the company the strength to move forward with opening their third location, which will be on S. Washington Street. ALX Community planned this in the midst of the pandemic and is currently one-third of the way full, and the doors aren’t even open yet! They took the changes made to the second location in the spring of 2020 and automatically designed the new location in a similar way. In addition to a dog-friendly office, modern and vibrant decorated space, and access to the best restaurants, the new ALX space will attract the same as both of the other spaces.