WHO IS THE COMMON: THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE BUSINESSMay 4, 2021News
The Common
Peter Buchholz, Co-Owner
Written by: Stacy Thomas
Photography by: Angela Bliss
It was a long and winding road for The Common co-owner Peter Buchholz before he finally ended up in Squamish in 2012. A self-admitted ski bum of the first order, Buchholz, a native of Jersey in the U.K. Channel Islands, started out as a young business owner at 23 when his father passed away and he took on the family business, a bustling two-level restaurant with over 20 staff.
“At a young age I was very much thrown into the business world,” he says. And because of that experience, he’s spent the rest of his life pursuing business opportunities and making connections. But don’t think that means he’s spent his time wearing suits and shaking hands in stuffy boardrooms.
In fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
When Buchholz left Jersey in 2006 to take a ski guiding course in Canmore, he fell in love with Canada and the ski industry, and that influenced his life and career path to this day. He spent the next decade doing the mountain hopping ski-patrol thing, flying season-to-season from places like Golden, Invermere and Revelstoke to New Zealand, France and Switzerland. But even while he was working as a backcountry ski guide in beautiful pristine settings, he always had his eye on the next big thing.
“Even though I always did the lifestyle sporting activity thing, it was a bit of my Achilles heel, that I couldn’t let go of the business side, and entrepreneurship,” he says. “I always had my head in both spaces, always looking out for opportunities. Even if I was guiding, I was always like, how can I make a business out of this.”
It was while he was working on one of these ventures—starting a heli-skiing travel company in Jersey—that Buchholz happened upon his first co-working space in the financial district of Amsterdam.
Co-work spaces were already common in Europe at that time – companies regularly used them for their staff to use, and when a friend in Amsterdam sent him to one, Buchholz realized the potential appeal of these buzzy, shared office spaces right away. “When I saw that space, it was quite inspirational, for someone like myself. For not only getting work done, but meeting other people and feeling inspired to keep working.”
So when he landed in Squamish after a time in Whistler where he worked in publishing and founded the Lone Duck events guide, he immediately started looking around for the chance to open a co-working space here. In 2018 the perfect spot opened up on Cleveland, and he and partner Quentin Emireau got to work building the space.
And it’s grown into so much more than just a co-work space, where people show up, work at a dedicated desk, and leave. Rather, they call it a “Networking Space” – and that’s what Buchholz says is the backbone and the driving force behind the business. The space serves as a hub and a confluence point for business leaders and innovators, with Buchholz helping to bring people together for various projects, not just professionally but in the wider community as well. From hooking up talented freelancers with job opportunities, to using events like movie premieres to get MPs and indigenous rights lawyers in the same room to discuss environmental issues, The Common provides a space for these connections to happen.
Just like everyone, The Common has had to change its model to adjust to Covid, with a focus on “office pods” rather than shared desks. And they are operating with an eye to the future, considering what work is going to look like post-pandemic. But the connections and networking will always be at the core of The Common.
“That’s the sort of connections that we create here. It’s more than desks,” Buchholz says. “The things that excite me, and what makes this space really unique, is that there are pretty phenomenal connections that happen, and community collaborations that happen. This space allows people to connect to others, and it’s really cool to see that happening, people finding each other, and then that magic happens.”
The Common
Peter Buchholz, Co-Owner
Written by: Stacy Thomas
Photography by: Angela Bliss
It was a long and winding road for The Common co-owner Peter Buchholz before he finally ended up in Squamish in 2012. A self-admitted ski bum of the first order, Buchholz, a native of Jersey in the U.K. Channel Islands, started out as a young business owner at 23 when his father passed away and he took on the family business, a bustling two-level restaurant with over 20 staff.
“At a young age I was very much thrown into the business world,” he says. And because of that experience, he’s spent the rest of his life pursuing business opportunities and making connections. But don’t think that means he’s spent his time wearing suits and shaking hands in stuffy boardrooms.
In fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
When Buchholz left Jersey in 2006 to take a ski guiding course in Canmore, he fell in love with Canada and the ski industry, and that influenced his life and career path to this day. He spent the next decade doing the mountain hopping ski-patrol thing, flying season-to-season from places like Golden, Invermere and Revelstoke to New Zealand, France and Switzerland. But even while he was working as a backcountry ski guide in beautiful pristine settings, he always had his eye on the next big thing.
“Even though I always did the lifestyle sporting activity thing, it was a bit of my Achilles heel, that I couldn’t let go of the business side, and entrepreneurship,” he says. “I always had my head in both spaces, always looking out for opportunities. Even if I was guiding, I was always like, how can I make a business out of this.”
It was while he was working on one of these ventures—starting a heli-skiing travel company in Jersey—that Buchholz happened upon his first co-working space in the financial district of Amsterdam.
Co-work spaces were already common in Europe at that time – companies regularly used them for their staff to use, and when a friend in Amsterdam sent him to one, Buchholz realized the potential appeal of these buzzy, shared office spaces right away. “When I saw that space, it was quite inspirational, for someone like myself. For not only getting work done, but meeting other people and feeling inspired to keep working.”
So when he landed in Squamish after a time in Whistler where he worked in publishing and founded the Lone Duck events guide, he immediately started looking around for the chance to open a co-working space here. In 2018 the perfect spot opened up on Cleveland, and he and partner Quentin Emireau got to work building the space.
And it’s grown into so much more than just a co-work space, where people show up, work at a dedicated desk, and leave. Rather, they call it a “Networking Space” – and that’s what Buchholz says is the backbone and the driving force behind the business. The space serves as a hub and a confluence point for business leaders and innovators, with Buchholz helping to bring people together for various projects, not just professionally but in the wider community as well. From hooking up talented freelancers with job opportunities, to using events like movie premieres to get MPs and indigenous rights lawyers in the same room to discuss environmental issues, The Common provides a space for these connections to happen.
Just like everyone, The Common has had to change its model to adjust to Covid, with a focus on “office pods” rather than shared desks. And they are operating with an eye to the future, considering what work is going to look like post-pandemic. But the connections and networking will always be at the core of The Common.
“That’s the sort of connections that we create here. It’s more than desks,” Buchholz says. “The things that excite me, and what makes this space really unique, is that there are pretty phenomenal connections that happen, and community collaborations that happen. This space allows people to connect to others, and it’s really cool to see that happening, people finding each other, and then that magic happens.”
