Craven Property Holdings, LLC is a dynamic, value added real estate development company whose goal it is to invest in securing medium to large scale obsolete and challenged commercial property and converting these properties into safe and highly efficient spaces, geared towards smaller local businesses and individuals functioning within and supporting a local creative economy.

Walter Craven

Walter Craven has been talking and thinking about business his whole life. “Everything about my upbringing was about work—hard work.” As a designer, real estate entrepreneur, owner of the famed and beloved Norton Factory Studios, and now, founder of Make.Work.Space., he has certainly put the lessons from his childhood—taught to him by his father via the family businesses—to good use.

Walter’s latest venture, Make.Work.Space., is a place for “modern inventors” to call a home. It’s a place where engineers, artists, designers, makers, and more—really anyone with a desire to invent—can think, collaborate, create, and actually learn how to bring the final product to market. Its first (of many) locations recently opened in Fruitvale, within walking distance from BART.

Inside, it’s filled with cubicles, hot-desks, private workbenches with access to state of the art CNC woodworking and metalworking equipment, private meeting rooms, and a private event space (and even a kitchen). But the thing that Walter believes will set Make.Work.Space. apart beyond even the high quality equipment and ideal set-up, complete with anything a modern inventor might need, is the intellectual and creative community its members will help build.

Walter Craven