The Urban Hive — Local services in Sacramento

Sharing my experience with Urban Hive as a warning to other event planners or individuals who want to use their space or events, as I would absolutely NOT recommend this company to anyone. I am an event planner by trade, and have been planning events for 5+ years at this point and I have never worked with a company with this lack of communication, penny pinching, and poor business practices. Here's the run down of red flags I experienced during my time with Urban Hive. They moved building without giving us any notice or heads up. I toured the original space and we agreed on what spaces we wanted to use for which events. About a month before our event they finally informed me that they had moved buildings so all of the spaces I had originally agreed to were now completely different. They gave us no option to terminate our agreement, and I had to tour the new space the next day to see which spaces we wanted to use. There were weeks of radio silence from the manager. I would ask a question trying to clarify catering or pricing and had to reach out multiple times to even get a response. As part of our event, we asked to have 2 private conference rooms for a series of meetings. Days before the event our group was moved into a hallway where the sound was all around bad. Our presenters voices were getting drowned out by other meetings we could hear happening near by, because we were in a hallway. The private meeting room we had originally agreed to was given to a different group. We also only were given one replacement space instead of two. They demanded payment of $15,000 with less than a 24 hour notice, delivered our contract days late, and then expected us to pay late fees. I have never been asked to come up with a payment of that amount in such a short notice without an official contract in place. They refused to accept payment by card. We were still nailing down details and the contract was being amended when they notified me that we would start receiving late fees on a contract that wasn't event in place yet. The AV support they provided was terrible. No hate to the kid that was on staff, he was doing the best he could, but the audio kept cutting out on the Mics we were using and the poor kid had no idea how to fix it or why it was happening. It felt less than professional, and not what you would expect from a professional event space charging what they were for AV. We had a guest that had asked to use an unoccupied room to take a business call during our event. They showed our guest to a space they could use, and then afterwards expected our guest to pay for a daily space rental, when they never informed our guest that it would be a separate charge or they would be expected to pay. We booked a room with good light for filming interviews, on the day of, they tried to move us into a dimly lit, ugly conference room, and then notified us we were not allowed to move the conference table out of the way so we could set up. The door to the original space I had booked was broken so again we had a hard time with noise coming into our space. Additionally, they told our camera crew that we couldn't put equipment on the tables because the tables were "too expensive". So we had $10,000 worth of camera equipment on the floor because the table cost too much.

Overall, the staff was rude, and refused to make even slight adjustments or compromises with us. I have never worked with a company that was this rigid and unfriendly. People who work in, and plan events for a living understand that flexibility and politeness is everything in an industry that has so many moving parts and things always come up. They had terrible communication on what their rules and expectations were ahead of time.

I gave them two stars because I will acknowledge that the space is beautiful, they set it up according to our map that I provided, and it was nice that they arranged everything with catering and that was taken off my list. However, for event spaces that is the bare minimum...

Friendly folks, clean space, and fantastic amenities.

Two major areas; one phone call friendly, the other for quieter work. Communal tables, private offices, floating/dedicated desks, call rooms, and space to store your bike.

Supportive of meetups, professional networking, and a strong interest in community building/giving back.

Security measures in place so you you can leave your things worry free.

There are showers; very handy if you're a bike commuter. Draft beer, kombucha, pour over coffee, tea, snacks (both healthy and unhealthy). Outdoor seating and bocce! Meditation, yoga, and massages.

Had a tour with co-founder Molly Weber....

The Hive is a glorious place. After working from home for a few years I was starting to miss being in a company environment. The Hive has everything I missed. This place has a fun culture. There are startups, entrepreneurs, contractors, business owners - interesting and kind people. Quite a diverse group of people. The furniture is comfortable, the coffee is exceptional, there's fresh fruit, snacks, they host events, there's office space, there's quiet space, and there's parking. I would definitely start a company out of here, not just because all the logistics work, but it feels like the right...