Creating Capitol Hill Spaces For Living — And Business — a Q&A With Liz Dunn

Capitol Hill developer Liz Dunn created two of Seattle’s most small-business friendly developments— Melrose Market and Chophouse Row. With a focus on locality and community, Dunn has opened numerous coworking spaces including The Cloud Room, which is geared towards bringing the area’s diverse neighborhood from writers to software developers, together.

In 2012, Dunn was a member of the original Hub in London and that inspired her to bring that sense of community to Capitol Hill. From there, Chophouse Row came to fruition and with that, plenty of office space that would create a uniquely innovative coworking space for the area.

The Cloud Room hosts a huge variety of members, from restaurants to graphic designers and everything in between. She describes the environment as “a dinner party”

“You want to set a beautiful table, but then you have to invite really great guests. So, the beautiful space was sort of setting the table,” Dunn said. “It’s not like we make people collaborate. We just set it up so that it can happen.”

Dunn says that Capitol Hill is the heart of Seattle and perfectly stitches together the world of art and tech in the area.

“What we are doing at The Cloud Room is trying to fold that local, homegrown, deep-rooted talent that’s always been the musicians, the writers, the publishers the designers— create a space where they don’t feel outnumbered by software developers.”