The Wedge Innovation Center opened in downtown Alton, Illinois, in April 2025. What started as a historic building has been transformed into a 55,000-square-foot coworking space complete with a gym, mother’s room, private offices, and a rooftop view of downtown Alton that can’t be beat.
After just over a year of operation, The Wedge is currently at 75 percent capacity, outpacing national and local trends for occupancy in the first year. The Wedge has also received five awards, with honors for everything from its stunning rooftop to its success at historic preservation.
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CEO Scot Heathman explains that the first year was a mix of trial and error, but one of many successes too.
“It takes a lot of time to listen and work with a community,” Heathman says. “I’m always looking to talk and get mentorship from other people that have operated places like this, and I have great connections all over the country. I’ve gone and got the help that I needed to equip myself to be ready to lead a place like this, but I’ve also learned not to be afraid to make changes.”
The $33 million renovation took a distinctive wedge-shaped building built in 1904 and combined it with the adjacent building, The Elfgen, built in 1968. It’s now Alton’s first coworking space, with various plans and packages. Individuals can purchase a day pass if they simply need a place to work with reliable WiFi or rent a private office for an entire year.
The Wedge is just one part of a much broader redevelopment effort led by John and Jayne Simmons through AltonWorks, a privately backed, mission-driven development company that has been acquiring and redeveloping property in downtown Alton since 2018. AltonWorks’ stated goal is to remake downtown as a more vibrant, walkable regional hub for innovation, housing, food, entertainment and outdoor recreation.
To that end, AltonWorks has acquired 34 historic downtown properties plus 24 vacant lots and residential properties adjacent to downtown.The company has also proposed a downtown hotel, a reimagined riverfront and the creation of a Great Rivers National Park spanning the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois river confluences.
Some Alton residents were concerned that the massive development might bring unwanted change to the community. The Wedge, as AltonWorks’ “signature catalytic project,” has also generated some griping.
“If there’s somebody that was really upset about this building, I want to listen and understand why,” Heathman says. “It’s not up to me to change their thought, but ask open-ended questions to get them talking about maybe there’s something that they could expose to me that maybe they just didn’t like about it.”
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) operates as a partner and has its own rooms for office space and coworking. In return, SIUE also provides The Wedge with graduate student assistants, one of which who works 20 hours a week there.
“The partnership is kind of like a sponsorship, they’ve got naming rights on the building, and that stays with us at least through next year,” Heathman explains. “It’s a three-year partnership that we have that we want to be able to renew in terms. They really want to have a presence in the community, and we want to have them in the community.”
Spatial Connections is one local company that leases from The Wedge. The company’s owner and founder, Kelly McGee, explains that the space offers everything he needs for his business to thrive.
“One of the challenges, especially when you’re a small company, is trying to find business space that is reasonable, has the amenities that you need, and then parking,” McGee says. “I was expecting to walk in here, find a bunch of the old office spaces that looked as if they were repainted, and some furniture thrown in there. That’s not what we found. When I came here, I was blown away by the attention to detail, the amenities, everything that I saw here.”
Since first moving in, McGee has upgraded to a larger space as his business continues to grow.
Beyond the amenities, The Wedge aims to offer something more: community. Its tagline is “built for co-working, but wired for connection,” for Tyler Duty, that’s been a big plus. One of the first tenants, he explains that his previous coworking experience was quite different from his experience at The Wedge, with many complaints about his content creation work due to the noise.
The Wedge has been different.
“Everybody here has been amazing. Everybody here is going out of their way to make sure I succeed. I can’t tell you how many marketing guys come through this building, but we’re never at each other’s throats. Everybody here’s been like, ‘Hey, here’s something I’ve learned. Here’s something that you’ve learned that we can help each other with,’” Duty says.
Now, on a typical day, Duty can be seen skating through the halls creating his videos. As Heathman says, that’s his thing.
As this was only year one, Heathman explains the project’s managers have much to learn and change. He hopes to create more private office space, and dreams of turning a space down the street into a STEM center for the community to access.
“The space was designed beautifully. There’s not a person who’s come in here and said, ‘I don’t like this.’ It just doesn’t happen. But you can’t be afraid to make changes either. What we’ve learned is to think about how we can utilize this space in different ways that we didn’t think was even possible,” Heathman says.
