The Grove Creates Community For Working Parents

Stephanie Muhs and her husband moved from Brooklyn to Charlotte five years ago, when she was pregnant with their second child. Muhs was a senior events manager at 1stDibs, an online marketplace for luxury goods. Before that, she had a similar role at Town & Country magazine. “We had to decide if we were going to do New York forever or take that leap,” she says. “It was incredibly inspiring and creative, but I was rarely home to put my son to bed.”

It’s a familiar struggle for working parents with young children. How do you balance career and family and find your proverbial village? Wouldn’t it be great if a place could prioritize parents’ physical, mental, and emotional health under one roof?  

As New York became the epicenter of the pandemic, the Muhses fast-tracked their plans to leave the city. They liked the pace of Charlotte and could see themselves raising a family here. “Charlotte is a crappy place to visit,” she says, “but it’s a great place to live.”

They adjusted to a new home with a new baby during lockdown, so building their social and professional networks was a challenge. “I found that for ages 0 to 5, it was a lot of ‘just get through it,’” Muhs says. “Those ages are the hardest. But in this new generation of parenting, we don’t want to just keep our heads down and trudge through it.” 

The age of remote work allows parents more flexibility, but it’s also changed the traditional child care structure. Part-time or work-from-home jobs afford them more time with their children, but scheduling calls around nap times and filling the gaps with babysitters isn’t sustainable. Coworking spaces with on-site child care are emerging in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. But only 6% of U.S. organizations offer on-site child care, according to the 2024 Employee Benefits Survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. 

Muhs had seen this model work for affluent working parents in Brooklyn and Manhattan and wanted to bring something like it to Charlotte—something that combined work and child care with perks like fitness classes and evening mixers. “I think COVID made the secondary markets get more attention,” she says. “We have the same audience that would appreciate this lifestyle amenity.”

In January 2024, Muhs opened The Grove in Myers Park without any press or advertising. It’s easy to miss in the retail complex at the intersection of Providence and Queens roads. Its signage is on the end unit beside Colonial Barber Shop, but the entrance is tucked behind a gate and down a flight of stairs (or stroller ramp). Inside is a 5,000-square-foot membership club for young families. 

The Grove’s entrance is behind a gate and down a flight of stairs—or stroller ramp.

It’s tough to describe The Grove in one tidy sentence. Imagine a coworking space with on-site child care, a café, and concierge parenting services. In addition to kids programming, it has adult workout classes, parenting seminars, wine nights, and pop-up shopping events. Members have access to occupational therapists, tutors, sleep specialists, and parenting experts. “A member once needed a space to do an interview on CNN,” Muhs says, “so they filmed that spot in The Studio.” 

The Grove is run like a country club—it’s cashless, and everything is charged to a member’s account—but there’s no dress code, and kids are seen and heard. It has about 160 members who pay entrance fees that range from $2,750 to $3,950 per family, plus monthly dues of $250 to $300. Muhs adds eight to 10 new families each month, and nannies, grandparents, and caregivers are included in memberships.

“In building this, it was about addressing a lot of my personal pain points I was finding as a mom,” she says. “But it’s not my mom hat that makes The Grove work. It’s my experience in event production and hospitality design.” 

It wasn’t easy selling her business model to investors and landlords, though. “I don’t think anyone understood it,” she says with a laugh. “The Theranos documentary had just come out, the Anna Delvey story, Fyre Festival … I thought, I don’t have anything to show, either. I was talking to a demographic that couldn’t relate to these pain points. It was eye-opening because I saw how important it was—and how easily you can forget how hard these years are.” 

Once she secured the lease, Muhs worked with the team at Cluck Architecture to create a space that would appeal to both kids and adults. She hired an audiovisual company to make The Grove compatible for remote workers’ needs and install cameras so kids are always in view. They added a room for nursing, a conference room for local practitioners like speech therapists and lactation specialists, and circular windows in the café booths so parents or caregivers have a view of their kids in the indoor treehouse. 

Muhs opened with just 14 families; within a few months, she had 50. The Grove adheres to a “no social footprint” policy—members can take photos, but there’s no posting or tagging—so all of its advertising has been word of mouth. “We get a lot of transplants who’ve moved here from bigger cities,” Muhs says, “so I’m starting to tell realtors, ‘Put us in your welcome pack.’ 

The Conference Room has space for local practitioners like speech therapists and piano instructors.

On any given weekday, a pair of nannies might sip smoothies in the café while their little ones nibble a chocolate croissant. In the booth beside them, a mom with a newborn strapped to her chest sips a latte while her toddler has speech therapy. Down the hall in the conference center, parents answer emails or take Zoom meetings until their kids emerge from Silly Science class. 

Hannah Munce is often there with her laptop and a cup of coffee. She runs a communications agency and is a mom of two children, ages 4 and 2. She and her husband moved back to Charlotte in 2020 after stints in San Francisco and New York. As they emerged from COVID, they wanted to rebuild their social and professional networks. “Working from home has become such a cultural thing, but I needed a community—that was my main impetus for joining The Grove,” Munce says. “I’ve made a lot of friends, but I’ve found a lot of clients there, too.”

It’s where she met Meg MacBain, who works remotely for an employee benefits company. MacBain and her husband joined last year when she was pregnant with their second child. “I was there throughout my whole maternity leave,” she says. “Maternity leave can be really isolating, and they have a new moms group, so that sense of community just skyrocketed.”

Circular windows in the café booths (above) allow parents to keep eyes on their kids in the indoor treehouse (below).

Today, she comes to The Grove to tackle her to-do lists while her kids are supervised and happy nearby. “I take calls in the nursing room a lot,” she says. On days she can’t be there, her nanny brings her daughter to play.

Anne Spencer is a mom to 3-year-old twins and a realtor at Corcoran HM Properties, so her hours can be unpredictable. For her, The Grove is a place that consolidates all of her kids’ needs and activities. “I like that it looks at what parents might need to do coming up and takes care of it,” she says. “Last fall, they offered flu shots. Once a year, they’ll have someone to clean your car seats. It’s like they’re thinking for us, and it takes that mental load off. As a working mom, I’ll take all the help I can get.”

Muhs is now a mother of three boys under 6, and life rarely slows down. She still feels the pain points, but she’s not trudging through work and parenting anymore. She just needed to find her village.

“It’s a testament to Charlotte,” she says. “They’re feeling a lot of pain points, too.”

She’s developed The Grove app for members and works with more than 40 local partners on programming and events. Grove Café serves Enderly Coffee, pastries from Honeybear Bake Shop, and sandwiches on Verdant sourdough bread. The merch area has baby clothing from James + Joy, and the grab-and-go section has lemon swirls from The Whole Hope. Speakers have included therapist and Charlotte Parent contributor Mollie Gee, and kids programming has featured Bold Music and GymSport. 

Muhs knows she’s met a need in Charlotte and says she’s open to expanding with this hyper-local model. “I have a couple of cities in mind that I’d like to explore,” she says. “It’s easy to get excited from an employer standpoint.” 

She still struggles to capture The Grove in one sentence, but when pressed, she says it’s a place to prioritize family life. “It’s built for kids,” she says, “but designed for adults.”