What Makes a Floor Become a Community?

“How much is it per square foot?”

Craig Scharton gets that question from people looking at Connect Labs Charlotte, the lab and office space on the seventh floor of 905 Pearl Park Way in The Pearl. His answer goes beyond the rent: who will help you, who will work with you, and how quickly can you find them?

“We’re a place where you are going to come and get the support you need and the collaborators that you need,” he says, “within the floor, within The Pearl, within the community.”

Sharing a floor doesn’t make people a community. So what does?

Scharton, the Connect Labs Charlotte site director, arrived in January 2025. He had revitalized downtowns, run a technology incubator, taught entrepreneurship, and bought a Fresno pub that was about to close. It was the only place open after six in a six-block area.

“I had a rescue dog, a rescue restaurant and a rescue house,” he says. “It was a rescue season of my life.”

Scharton explains his approach to community through Mary Poppins.

“Rather than saying, you’re the conservative dad [Mr. Banks], here’s why you’re wrong, [Mary Poppins] creates situations. She sets everything in place, and they all start figuring out their roles. By the end they’re all out flying kites together.”

“A whole bunch of people telling each other they’re wrong,” he added, “is a highly ineffective way to get change to happen.”

Members, not tenants

The companies who locate at Connect Labs locations are called members rather than tenants.

For Craig, calling someone a tenant puts him in the role of landlord, worrying solely about rents and repair costs. “It sets up an adversarial relationship,” he says. “It’s the same amount of letters, I think.”

Making it fun to show up

Art rotates through the lab corridors. Carla Nathan, who curated the current art exhibition, brought a DJ.

“I usually start by modeling that behavior and doing some things that are maybe unexpected,” Scharton says. Then others begin contributing. “Now the bar is a little bit higher, and then the next person is going to bring in, you know, a juggler.”

“If something’s fun, you can’t keep people away, and if it’s not fun, you can’t pay them to be there.”

In June, Scharton and Advisory5, now a Connect Labs Charlotte member, started a series of member events together. The first was Neighbor Night, where each guest bragged about a neighbor at The Pearl and named the book they have read the most. Tours of IRCAD North America and Siemens Healthineers followed. At an August reception, startups showed their work to physicians and faculty from the medical school over bourbon. On October 20, members rode a bus to Innovation Quarter in Winston-Salem with the new gBETA Charlotte Health cohort and its Program Manager, Amory Lenarz.

“If you focus on the human side of it,” he says, “these things start working together.”

The human part

Scharton has written that his process is simple but rarely followed. Asked why, he starts with how people think.

“The rational part of our brain is the part we like to use the most, and rarely are people rational,” he says. Humans are “messy and organic.”

“If a city wants to do economic development, they come up with the idea of a business park, or they come up with a tax incentive, and they don’t stop to think about how do we get the people that are already here working together more and buying from each other more and supporting each other.”

“I don’t know why we don’t naturally start that way,” he says. “I think it’s getting worse, not better.”

He starts with good morning.

“Friendliness is free,” he says. “Can you start by saying good morning to people? Can you start by having a fun conversation? It doesn’t cost anything to do that and actually feels really good, and other people like it too.”

“I hate to make my job sound so easy.”

What it feels like

Asked what the floor should look like in year three, Scharton changes the question: “I think more about what does it feel like.”

People should want to come to work and feel they are missing something when they are away. The companies should have enough happening to give members reasons to celebrate together.

“Whether it’s adding an employee or getting an investment or landing a contract or even growing out of the space,” he says, “we should be constantly in celebration mode.”

He has a word for what he watches for.

“When I see two people out for lunch that I know weren’t connected before, and they’re connected now, and something’s going to come out of that, who even knows what?” he said. “That’s what I consider my artwork. I don’t paint. My painting is seeing that happen.”