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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Retail space negotiations for a full-time Venture Café continue, but the organizer of the planned tech-community meeting space, Timothy Rowe, shows no sign of impatience.

The founder of the Cambridge Innovation Center and president of the Kendall Square Association has been pursuing his vision for a Kendall Square meeting space since May 2009.

The February opening of an 11th-floor meeting space inside his business incubator at 1 Broadway satisfied some of that need.

“In a sense, we’re already up and running,” he said Friday.

The café runs 3 to 8 p.m. Thursdays and now focuses on bringing people in with events and office hours — presentations by interesting people and groups and time the public (and entrepreneurs) can spend speaking with representatives from companies such as Google or with reporters from The Boston Globe or xconomy.com.

Starting from a handful of visitors, the café has grown to attract 60 or 70 people a week, Rowe said.

The ultimate café, meant as a central meeting place and hangout space for the academic, high-tech, biotech, entrepreneurial and venture capital crowd in Cambridge, should be large, possibly around 3,500 square feet; open early and close late; and be within 100 feet of the Kendall Square T stop.

Rowe has said it’s a difficult combination, and lengthy negotiations bear that out.

But talks are ongoing, he said. There’s no deadline, and — with the current café in place — no urgency.