Every maker space could just call itself a maker space. This one is named after a man — and the workshop he spent a lifetime building.
Grandpa Dick was a lifelong craftsman. The kind of person who could fix anything in his basement workshop — and did. Over the years his collection of tools grew into a small, well-loved fortress of woodworking, metalwork, and patience. When the time came that he could no longer use them, the question wasn't what do we do with the tools? It was where do these tools, and everything they know, go to keep working?
The answer is Grandpa's Workshop. Dick's collection is the founding Legacy donation — the physical foundation of this space and the human story at its heart. His name will be on the wall the day we open, and his tools will keep teaching long after.
We call the workshop Grandpa's — without "Dick" — because we want it to feel like everyone's grandpa. Yours, mine, the one down the street with the perfect bench. But this is Dick's story. And on this page, he gets his full name.
I'm Sarah. I spend my days in Department of Defense configuration management — which is a fancy way of saying I'm the kind of person who builds systems that actually work, because when they don't, someone notices. That habit of mind is what I'm bringing to this workshop.
Ogden doesn't have a community maker space. Salt Lake does — forty miles south. But Weber County's roots are in manufacturing, in outdoor recreation, in people who make things with their hands. The market is unserved, the need is real, and the time is now. So I'm building it.
I'm doing this in partnership with my husband, with my grandfather's tools and story leading the way, and with the community of founding members and Legacy donors who say yes alongside me. This is not a side project. It's the next decade.
Grandpa's Workshop runs on a few principles that don't bend. They show up in every decision — what we buy, how we welcome new members, how we keep the space safe, what we expect of each other.
Members run the space alongside Sarah. Opener/closer rotations, equipment leads, kids' corner keepers — the workshop belongs to the people who show up.
Master craftspeople teach beginners. Beginners ask the questions that make masters think. The Legacy Program makes this real.
$35 a month at the founding rate. Less than a streaming subscription. Free for stewards. Discounted for kids-corner keepers. No barrier should be financial.
Everyone — first-time beginner or fifty-year veteran — completes the same equipment orientation. Not a restriction. A universal standard that protects everyone.
Ogden has roughly 90,000 people inside the city limits and more than 300,000 within a 20-minute drive. Weber County's economy is built on manufacturing, outdoor recreation, and creative industry — a population naturally drawn to making things by hand.
The closest comparable community maker space is in Salt Lake City, 40 miles south. That's a real gap. National research suggests 1–3% of urban adults are active or potential maker-space members — which in Ogden alone means an addressable market of 900 to 2,700 people. We need 30 to break even.
What's not in the numbers: that Ogden is a city of people who tell each other about good things. A community maker space in this town is going to grow by word of mouth, by the parent who tells the other parent, by the welder who tells the welder. We're starting small on purpose.
Pre-launch. Honest version: we have founding-member commitments coming in, the business plan is finished and under review with the Weber State SBDC, and we're scouting flex and light-industrial space in the Historic 25th Street corridor and the surrounding neighborhoods.
Phase 1: Legal structure, bank account, and the first ten founding member commitments — then we sign a lease. Phase 2: Tool acquisition (Legacy donations + estate sales), buildout with founding-member labor, soft launch open house. Phase 3: Memberships go live, first classes run, grant applications go out. Break-even target: 90 days post-launch.
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