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The Girl Scouts have a real estate strategy

The newly opened DreamLab promises more activities, more accessibility, and more visibility outside of cookie season.

The Girl Scouts have a real estate strategy

[Photo: Lee Stiffler-Meyer/Let the Light in Studio]

BY Nate Berg4 minute read

The typical Girl Scout meeting happens wherever it can. It might be in a borrowed room in a church or community center, the home of a volunteer scout leader, or even in an office building. Though the goals of the Girl Scouts are lofty—engendering a love of the outdoors; increasing science, technology, arts, and math skills; encouraging entrepreneurship—the physical meeting spaces can be less than inspiring.

Now, with a new pilot space that’s just opened in a shopping center in Denver, Girl Scouts USA is hoping to make its meeting spaces more convenient, more engaging to current Scouts, and more attractive to potential new ones.

[Photo: Lee Stiffler-Meyer/Let the Light in Studio]

The project is called the DreamLab, and it’s a storefront experience center intended to be used by Girl Scout troops for activities, meetings, and training. The space includes a science and technology lab, a boutique, a podcast booth, a bouldering wall, and an outdoor skills area with a faux firepit and tent to practice camping skills. “We really thought about making the volunteer experience easier, having things there that they need to host their troop meetings, and having things for the girls to get excited about,” says Anne Smith, Girl Scouts USA senior vice president of property strategy and planning. The DreamLab in Denver is the first of what the organization hopes will be a series of new spaces opening around the country to help bring membership numbers back up to pre-pandemic levels.

[Photo: Lee Stiffler-Meyer/Let the Light in Studio]

It’s a far cry from those church basements and suburban romper rooms. “We found through Covid that a lot of the places where we had traditionally held troop meetings or Girl Scout programming events were not as accessible to us any more,”says Smith. “We really wanted to take back the ability to have those programs delivered within our own spaces.”

[Photo: Lee Stiffler-Meyer/Let the Light in Studio]

As it turns out, the Girl Scouts have a lot of their own spaces. The Girl Scouts organization has a federated model, with 111 councils operating semi-independently around the country. Altogether, the organization has about 1,000 properties in its portfolio, including camps, offices, and troop houses owned or leased by the parent organization or the councils.

[Photo: Lee Stiffler-Meyer/Let the Light in Studio]

When the pandemic canceled most troop meetings and events, Girl Scouts USA ran an analysis of these properties. What turned out to be important was not so much the type of property, but where it was located. “We found that a lot of the locations in our current portfolio are in inconvenient locations for our members. They’re low traffic, and they don’t really engage with our communities in the way that we want to,” says Smith. Properties that were more than a 20- to 30-minute drive from the membership base had “very low utilization percentages,” Smith says.

The pandemic hit the organization’s financial side, with revenue from membership dues down from about $55 million in 2019 to $35 million in 2021. The DreamLab is an investment in reinvigorating membership numbers.

The organization partnered with the commercial real estate consultancy Newmark and came up with the DreamLab concept. “Convenience and accessibility was a big part of it,” says Elizabeth Hart, Newmark’s president of leasing for North America. Councils are now scouting locations that are transit accessible, or near existing commercial areas where a parent might be able to run errands while their child is at a meeting. “We want to make it a more seamless experience, rather than being something that is a little bit out of the way,” she says.

That doesn’t mean just ditching rural places for the city, though. Hart says the DreamLab concept can function in places big and small, under the right circumstances. “In order for it to work best, there needs to be a concentration of people who can gather in it because that’s what’s going to give it life and meaning,” she says. “That can happen in a variety of different ways.”

[Photo: Lee Stiffler-Meyer/Let the Light in Studio]

The DreamLab was designed as a prototype, with three different sizes between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet, and a kit-of-parts approach to the features and spaces within. Some councils may have only the membership and funding to support a smaller DreamLab, while others may need a bigger space to run their programming and events.

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Two other DreamLab spaces are now being built, in Gonzales, Louisiana, and North Brunswick, New Jersey. Five other councils across the country are also considering their own versions.

[Photo: Lee Stiffler-Meyer/Let the Light in Studio]

The features in the DreamLab were influenced by focus groups with active Girl Scouts, who told the organization what kinds of activities they wanted more of. “Everything was about technology, modern, and wanting to be introduced to areas of our outdoor program but in a safer, local space,” Smith says.

The concept is also seen as a tool for increasing the organization’s brand recognition outside of what may be its most visible few weeks: the springtime Girl Scout cookie season.

“We’re a very present organization this time of year, but you don’t necessarily see us every single day the rest of the year,” says Smith. “We want to use these spaces to increase recruitment and to really showcase everything that Girl Scouts has to offer.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nate Berg is a staff writer at Fast Company, where he writes about design, architecture, urban development, and industrial design. He has written for publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Wired, the Guardian, Dwell, Wallpaper, and Curbed More


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