Houston's East End is getting a members-only work club stuffed with vintage Eames chairs, old trophy cases, and industrial windows original to the 1940s building it calls home. Switchyards East End will open Monday, August 31, inside the historic Imperial Laundry building at 3401 Harrisburg Blvd, Suite H, marking the company's third Houston-area location after its Montrose debut sold out within an hour last September.
CultureMap Houston recently toured the nearly completed space, and as CultureMap Houston reports, the club sits near a busy railway interchange and across from a Houston METRORail line, in a corridor that also houses James Beard Award-winning restaurant Street to Kitchen inside the same Imperial Laundry building. The building's laundry-era history became a literal starting point for the design plan, according to the outlet's tour.
Vintage Furnishings Sourced From Round Top and Old Schools
Switchyards head of design Jared Erickson bought roughly 200 vintage Eames chairs at the Round Top spring show, part of a broader sourcing strategy that also pulls display and trophy cases in bulk from old schools and leans on local thrift and resale shops for smaller finds, per the same account. The company keeps an approximately 20,000-square-foot warehouse to store bulk vintage finds gathered from around the country, and its design team creates the majority of club layouts out of Atlanta before Erickson customizes them locally. The East End club will feature a custom light box with a cork bulletin board, old ashtrays, wooden thread bobbins, vintage letterman's jackets, and pennants made by partner Oxford Pennant, which specializes in an older, worn-in aesthetic.
The overall look follows what the design team calls an 80/20 mix, blending tried-and-true furnishings with curated vintage pieces, alongside the original industrial windows left over from the building's 1940s construction and soft, relaxing artificial lighting throughout. Erickson described the goal in blunt terms, telling the outlet the spaces are meant to combine, in his words, a hotel lobby, a dive bar, and a neighborhood coffee shop.
A Capped Membership Model That Sells Out Fast
Switchyards caps East End membership at 250 people, the same limit that drove all Montrose memberships to sell out on opening morning, as documented by CoworkingCafe. Memberships go on sale at 10am on August 27, with sneak peeks and pop-ins planned at the East End club from August 24 through August 26. Once the initial 250 spots sell, Switchyards maintains a waitlist, and the company runs both an early-access email list and a text notification list, with membership links potentially going out via text alerts first, per a hint from Switchyards itself.
Monthly pricing runs $129 for flexible plans, according to Switchyards' own listing, and members get 24/7 access to all 39 of the company's clubs nationwide. Each location includes free locally sourced coffee and tea, fast Wi-Fi, private phone booths, free bookable breakout rooms, relaxed lounge-style areas for mingling, and multiple quiet zones featuring heads-down spaces with white noise machines.
From Atlanta Incubator to National Neighborhood Chain
Switchyards, headquartered in Atlanta, was founded in 2016 by CEO Michael Tavani as a 19,000-square-foot B2C startup incubator before pivoting into the 24/7 neighborhood work club model it runs today, according to Rough Draft Atlanta. The company financed its jump from 10 Atlanta locations to more than 30 nationwide using non-dilutive expansion debt from Homegrown instead of venture equity, according to a case study published by Homegrown, a financing approach that let Tavani retain control while scaling quickly.
Day-to-day operations across all 39 clubs run without traditional front-desk staff. Instead, employees called Clubkeeps maintain coffee stations and manage the balance between quiet and social zones under what the company describes as an invisible hospitality framework, according to Talents by Vaia. Houston's Montrose club opened at 6,500 square feet last year, making it the company's third-largest location nationwide behind an 8,000-square-foot flagship, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Why Neighborhood Work Clubs Are Multiplying
The East End opening comes as remote work isolation continues to fuel demand for these third-place style clubs. Gallup survey data cited by the Houston Chronicle found fully remote employees report higher rates of loneliness than their on-site counterparts, a dynamic the paper ties directly to the appeal of paid neighborhood work spaces. That demand shows up in the broader market too: U.S. flexible workspace inventory grew 15% between early 2025 and 2026 to nearly 9,000 locations nationwide, with growth concentrated in smaller, neighborhood-based concepts in secondary and suburban markets, according to Yardi Kube.
Switchyards isn't stopping at East End. State filing records reviewed by Axios show the company is preparing a third Houston-area club at 5212 Bellaire Blvd in Bellaire, tied to a 3,990-square-foot commercial renovation project. Details on when that Bellaire location will clear municipal licensing and open to members have not yet been reported.
