For 150 years, downtown Beloit was home to an enormous foundry that manufactured paper-making machines the size of football fields. When the company went bankrupt in 1999, the 800,000 square-foot space was abandoned and thousands were left without jobs. American businesswoman, Diane Hendricks, and her late husband, Ken, purchased the property in 2001 and began redeveloping the large bays into high-end commercial spaces for local companies and tech startups. The campus was named "Ironworks" to pay tribute to the early days of the manufacturing companies that called it home. Today, Ironworks Campus is home to nearly 20 companies and more than 1,500 employees.Irontek opened in 2016 as an 8,000-square-foot coworking space on the Ironworks Campus, with a mission to "Build Beloit" by cultivating the community's entrepreneurial ecosystem. Offering a creative work space, a dynamic community of members, and a wide variety of amenities, the space filled quickly. Two expansions later, Irontek has tripled in size, serves nearly 200 members, and continues to grow and support new ideas every day.