Bill Mogauro may call Boston home – but the project manager with Agility Recovery has sparkling reviews for a building at the corner of Mission Avenue and Molter Road in Liberty Lake that has become a unique home to dozens of businesses.
Agility – which provides resilient recovery for companies facing everything from an earthquake to a break in a water main – has occupied space at the Liberty Lake Portal for over two years. Mogauro credits Portal General Manager Keith Kopelson and his staff for being “extremely intuitive in offering suggestions and going out of their way to help us achieve our goals.”
“Keith has probably been the best business manager I’ve ever worked with,” Mogauro said.
The Portal has been around since 2000 and grown in scope and visibility over the years. Originally known as the TierPoint Building, the site benefits from the TierPoint data center, located in the Portal’s basement. Mogauro first discovered the Portal through Agility’s connection with TierPoint.
“It started with cloud services and our partnership with TierPoint,” he said. “We learned there was office space available here.”
Mogauro says he appreciates the Portal’s centralized location between Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, easy access to amenities and convenient features like a loading dock just off Agility’s office space. Expanded parking in the back of the building has also drawn positive reviews from tenants.
Office space at the Portal ranges from 100 square feet up to 4,000 square feet. Agility – which has sites in College Station, Texas and the Boston area, as well as a collection of mobile units – occupies a 1,450-square-foot office that Kopelson has tailored right down to the corporate colors in the break room.
“This is a very modern, well-situated facility,” Mogauro said. “For us, it couldn’t be more perfect in terms of accommodations.”
Kopelson, a former member of the Liberty Lake City Council and a successful entrepreneur, took over as the Portal’s general manager in January 2017. He greets occupants here by their first name and always with a genuine smile.
“I really like working here,” Kopelson says. “I like to make sure people are comfortable, whether it’s adding a wall here or taking a paint swab and adding corporate colors to a room.”
Kopelson’s flexible approach has been apparent recently with new, short-term rental options for conference rooms and executive suites. While Portal tenants still get first dibs on a space like the Mica Peak Room with capacity for 50, outside groups have been utilizing the room for events like a First Aid training. Mica Peak can be leased for $80 per hour at a minimum of two hours or $300 for six hours.
“Tenants get priority but we don’t bump people,” Kopelson said. “Once a space is booked, it’s booked.”
A classy boardroom that comfortably seats a dozen is available for $40 an hour while rentals of traditional office space run $100 for four hours or $150 for eight hours. Two smaller executive suites can be reserved at $25 an hour for a minimum of three hours.
“Because our executive suites did so well, offering a temporary office made sense,” Kopelson said. “These are great if you work out of your home and are meeting a customer. You have people where it doesn’t make sense to have a permanent office, so this works out well.”
The temporary offices are fully furnished and include features like a desktop computer, large monitor and printer.
Kopelson notes that the Portal can be likened to an incubator space with tenants moving up the square footage ladder as their respective operations expand.
“As they grow, we get them into bigger offices,” he said.
