The Assemblage

Anthony Oren and his team at Nero Consulting, the firm running IT for The Assemblage, was there from the beginning with the opening of the first location at NoMad in New York City. Even before it opened, the coworking concept was ambitious in its mission to emphasize health and wellness on top of cultivating a professional community. With over 1,000 members and two locations (soon to be three), the Assemblage has become a haven of mindful coworking and co-living in a city that seems to embody the opposite—chaos and noise. The consultants working to open the space chose Kisi as its access control solution from The Assemblage’s inception.

When did you open the Assemblage?

Our NoMad location opened over a year ago and we’re opening the third location this year, The Assemblage Park, on Park Avenue.

About how many people do you have accessing the space every day?

~200-400 for Nomad

~115-250 for John Street

~The newest location on Park Avenue will have 2,000 projected members

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What is the concept? It’s coworking + co-living, but how is it different from a WeWork or Regus space?

Our Financial District location (John Street) is the only Assemblage with a co-living aspect. There are three floors of coworking and then 80 hotel/short-term apartments. It’s a great opportunity for people who are coming to NYC to get a taste of what we offer because when they stay they have access to all communal spaces, daily programming and also the after-hours program, plus a taste of coworking. The core product offering is coworking but we have an after-hours cultural membership. The cultural aspect is all about tapping into the community and having access to thought leaders.

Aside from access control on the doors, we use Kisi for conference rooms and for checking in to co-living reservations, but any of our coworking members can use Kisi to book conference or meditation rooms. These come at a cost, so Kisi allows us to manage the payment and access with a Nexudus integration for now, but we’re building our own integration, an app, that we’ll use with Kisi’s open API.

Why did you choose Kisi?

We opened Assemblage with Kisi because it allowed us to understand who’s using the conference rooms and when they’re being used. It also allows us to provide and monitor the use of private and communal spaces. We’re a thought leader across many different areas, and our form of coworking is quite unique compared to other offices because we focus on wellness and consciousness and encouraging our members to tap into themselves both personally and professionally. Assemblage is really a place to get to know your fellow members. We are also a thought leader within technology, so that’s why we went with Kisi. We have many different touchpoints with members and we’re always trying to think creatively and innovatively.

How does Kisi help with day-to-day operations? Why do you think it was chosen over a different system?

It helps with checking members in through a webhook integration, with controlling who has access to which coworking office and giving members access to conference rooms during the duration of their conference room booking.

It was chosen because it integrates with our property management system, called Nexudus, as well as various other systems that we integrate with such as Google Calendar and we use a webhook integration for other services such as Hubspot. The Nexudus-Kisi integration assigns Nexudus members appropriate Kisi access depending on their membership status—this is done automatically.

How does Kisi help you with meeting rooms? How does it help with private office space management?

It provides the booker of a meeting room with access to the rooms that they have booked without any manual effort. It also helps with granting and removing office access for members without having to deal with physical keys.

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How does access to the hotel, or co-living aspect, of the space work?

Kisi is not used for hotel access, only for the conference rooms and coworking offices. The Nexudus-Kisi integration assigns Kisi access to a conference room when a member books a room via Nexudus. When members move into a coworking office that uses Kisi, they are manually assigned access to the door via Kisi. This access is manually removed when they move out of the office.

What type of access levels do you have in place? For example, do members have access to all floors, etc.?

Members have access to the front door and the front desk. The Kisi reader at the front desk is used to check the member in via a webhook integration. Access to conference rooms is automatically granted to members when the member books a room. This access expires once the meeting is over. Staff are assigned one of two levels of access. Staff are either provided access to all conference rooms or are provided access to all conference rooms and coworking private offices.

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How will Kisi help when scaling to your next location?

Kisi will continue to greatly help with conference room access control, just like it does in our current two locations for the IT Staff at Nero Consulting. Our goal is to streamline the process as much as possible so that as Assemblage expands its footprint around the country, IT can keep up with technology integrations.