FAIRFIELD — Christa Driscoll knows her way around every inch of this centuries-old brick building in the heart of Fairfield’s village center — both on the inside and out.
“There’s so much history here,” she said on a recent morning, stopping to point out the carvings that dot the walls, the trapdoor that once brought in goods for sale.
The Brick Store, as it’s known in town, was sitting vacant when Driscoll decided to buy it six years ago. Since then, she’s chipped away at a nearly complete retrofit of the 1830 structure, aiming to create what is likely the first coworking space in Franklin County.
On Saturday, she’s set to host an open house to mark the project’s completion.
“There isn’t a lot for a local professional in a rural area like this,” said Driscoll, who grew up in nearby Fairfax and runs a small stationery business. She wants the coworking space to help people meet each other when they might otherwise work from home.
The workspaces Driscoll has built are spread across two of the building’s three levels. The top floor — framed by huge, wooden beams — has five individual desks that can each be rented out for $75 a week. The top level also has a small common lounge.
Three people have signed up to rent a desk there so far, she said.
The building’s bottom level — built into a small hill — is set up as an “open coworking” space, Driscoll said. This floor has seats for about a dozen people spread across some individual tables and some shared ones, along with a kitchen around the corner.
Driscoll said she’s considering charging $25 for a day’s access to the shared space, and $39 for a week. She has set up several tables outside where people can work, too.
The building’s main level, meanwhile, is a base for Driscoll’s stationery work, and she wants to host events there. It also has several displays detailing the building’s history.
Since 1830, The Brick Store has had at least four different owners, according to Driscoll. It served many of those years as a general store and post office — “the center of town,” she said — before becoming an antiques and flower shop in the 1990s.
When Driscoll bought the 3,200-square-foot building in 2017, she tried to keep many of its original details intact. It needed significant renovations, though, including a rebuilt foundation, a modern heating and cooling system and more efficient windows.
“It was struggling with some real structural decay,” said Cathy Ainsworth, the Fairfield town administrator. Ainsworth said the town is excited that the building, which has a prominent location at the corner of Route 36 and South Road, “is alive again.”
Officials also hope the project will help draw people into their town of about 2,100.
Driscoll estimates that she has spent $150,000 on the project so far. “And that doesn’t include any of the time that my husband has spent up here,” she said, adding that his background in engineering came in handy throughout the restoration process.
The project also got support from a roughly $19,000 federal grant, Driscoll said.
Lisamarie Charlesworth, manager of the Franklin County Regional Chamber of Commerce, called the coworking space “a really cool project,” and said that if enough people start using it, it could be a model for new, similar facilities in other parts of the county.
The chamber is working to develop a networking group for young, local professionals, she said, and the coworking space could be a good place for that group to meet.
“I’ve talked to people who are new to the region and are looking for something like that,” Charlesworth said.
