Our grand opening on Jan. 24 exceeded all expectations. Soon afterwards we were looking forward to the start of spring and jumpstarting the Groover Labs community. We gathered for our first member social on Feb. 21, enjoying time on a Friday afternoon to get to know each other better over local brews, chips and salsa and treats from the Nifty Nut House. We shared stories about our work, and co-founders Curt Gridley and Tracy Hoover talked about their vision for our coworking and makerspace areas.

Then COVID-19 gave us a big jolt.

Now we’ve temporarily closed Groover Labs to the public.  Our members and staff are following CDC guidelines and following the recommended precautions such as wearing masks, increased cleaning and social distancing. In addition we’ve postponed all events.

This has clearly been frustrating for everyone connected with Groover Labs.

We’re still just a fledgling community looking to grow our wings. The pandemic has put a hold on our original plans.

This has caused us to turn our energy toward helping the greater Wichita community during this public health crisis. Curt and metal lab lead Jeremiah Burian are running multiple 3D printers to make Prusa-designed face shields in collaboration with the online group Combating COVID-19 As A Community!! Curt, always looking for ways to make things better, faster and cheaper, is evaluating new designs that would be much quicker to produce since 3D printing can be rather slow.  We hope to have news about this soon.

In our hotseat area, Tracy and community associate Maggie Gilmore are sewing non-medical cloth masks. Their first batch went to staff and community members to help them flatten the curve.

We’ve also recently become involved in a larger scale effort to produce cloth masks — details of which will emerge within the next couple days.

This is exactly what Groover Labs’ mission is all about — fueling collaboration and helping bring products to fruition.

Though it’s been a long time coming, we’re about to activate our online forum as a central place to exchange ideas and talk about our work in progress. It will allow us to more quickly share updates and engage with our community about the details of our projects. You’ll be hearing more about this from us within the next few days.

Anyone can participate in the forum — you don’t have to be a Groover Labs member.

We're here to do our part to help Wichita weather this pandemic, and we hope you'll join us.