It all started over a round of golf.

Patrick Williams shot a round late last year with Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce CEO Mike McDorman and sparked the idea to bring a community hub to the downtown of the Clark County city.

“I was inspired by what I had seen here,” said Williams, who is from Springfield but has worked in stints in both Central Ohio and Las Vegas, spending a year and a half at COhatch‘s coworking space in Worthington.

“I’d been in coworking in Columbus for two years and the enterprise piece was exciting to me,” he said, “the way that they give back and what they bring to the cities where they locate.”

Williams said he’d become convinced of the need for such a property in his hometown. The round of golf led to a packed meeting on a snowy day this year when all of Springfield’s major economic development groups heard the pitch and COhatch founder Matt Davis sold the deal for a new location there.

“What gets me about that city is some of the pictures of downtown in the ’30s and ’40s, when there are thousands of people in the streets of downtown Springfield,” Davis said via phone. “So when we thought of opening in Springfield, it was about making what was old new, and in a sense, making COhatch the center of a community that it was designed to be.”

COhatch is expanding beyond its Central Ohio roots after two years of nonstop growth and transformation. Earlier this year, it secured financing to fund growth of up to 10 locations in Central Ohio and beyond.

The projections for growth are bolder than just a few months ago. Davis has six locations locked down and plans to open 12 more in five years. Private equity group SpringForward, which targets revitalization in the Clark County city, is helping to finance the Springfield project, which has a budget around $1.75 million.

Williams and his wife Nancy are the company’s first franchisee.

Myers Market, at 101 S. Fountain Ave. in downtown Springfield, is a 25,000-square-foot building built in 1916 during the city’s industrial heyday. As COhatch’s sixth location, it’s going to be big, with a year-round artisan marketplace, shared kitchen and food hall, in addition to 12,000 square feet of office space and the lifestyle and event areas typical of its other Ohio sites.

It’ll be a “modern re-envisioning” of the one-time marketplace there, as a place where entrepreneurs can congregate and new food concepts get their feet. And as its first franchise, it’ll scale up the hyperlocal community-building aspect that the company envisioned when it opened its first hub in Worthington in 2016.

“It is exciting for the people of Springfield to see a new and unique use for our city market that honors the history of the structure while creating a supportive environment for the development of new and existing businesses,” Springfield Mayor Warren Copeland said in a statement.

COhatch launched its first space in Worthington amid the nationwide explosion of coworking spaces serving the nascent freelance economy. For the past few years it has located primarily in Central Ohio’s suburban centers – new locations sprung up in Delaware and Upper Arlington.

But in Springfield, the model could be more fully realized, Davis said. Aging city centers in the Midwest’s more economically stagnant cities have struggled to attract big new common spaces where at-home workers can congregate, as well as the small-concept food incubators and mini-retail stalls.

And it’s dramatically expanding from just a shared office space to a hub for social events, business networking and even a planned future investment fund. In Springfield it sees a chance to test this community-building concept on a new scale, Davis said.

“Our whole mission is to improve communities and people’s lives,” Davis said. “If we can’t do this model in Springfield, shame on us. There’s so much support, the city’s backed us, the Chamber has backed us, we will build something completely badass out there because people are so excited about it.”

SpringForward Executive Director Michael Greitzer said it’s a backer in the business model because it preserves historic architecture and “will create a unique and exciting gathering place in the center of downtown.”

The concept has had time to experiment with these ideas too, including The Madery, a mini-mall of social enterprises that bring awareness of local social issues and small ventures working to fight them. Those, too, are in short supply in “disconnected cities” like Springfield, Davis said.

COhatch’s Springfield location will open in mid-2019.