Did you discover Florence through Junktique, Junktique Off-Main, the Florence Merchants Car Show, our antique stores, or another event downtown?
You may have come to Florence looking for antiques, vintage finds, historic buildings, good food, or a fun weekend in a small Colorado town. But look a little closer and you'll discover another side of Florence.
Florence is also home to a growing technology, entrepreneurial and business community.
Just a couple of blocks from Historic Main Street, the former Florence High School has been transformed into Emergent Campus, an award-winning rural technology hub, business incubator, coworking center and workforce-development campus.
Emergent Campus is a great example of what makes Florence different.
The building served as Florence High School and later Florence Middle School for nearly a century. Today, instead of sitting vacant, the historic school has been repurposed into a place where entrepreneurs, technology companies, remote workers, startups and established businesses can work, collaborate and grow.
The building was placed on the National and State Registers of Historic Places in 2022 and received a Stephen H. Hart Award for Historic Preservation in 2024, recognizing the successful reuse of the historic property.
It is very Florence: preserve the history, reuse what already exists and give it a new purpose.
Walk a few blocks in Florence and you can go from a century-old antique shop to a technology company, from a coffee shop to a coworking space, or from a historic Main Street storefront to a business-incubator meeting.
Emergent Campus offers:
The Florence campus is designed to support everyone from a single remote worker or new entrepreneur to growing companies looking for affordable space and access to a professional network.
And this isn't simply a local experiment. Emergent Campus has received state and national recognition, including a U.S. Small Business Administration Rural Innovation Excellence Award, while its workforce initiatives have attracted significant state and federal investment. Its network now reaches beyond Florence into other communities in Southern Colorado.
The idea that a technology company has to be located in Denver, Boulder or another major metropolitan area is changing.
Emergent Campus gives businesses and professionals the opportunity to operate from a small Colorado town while remaining connected to a much larger technology and business network.
Companies and organizations associated with the Florence campus have included IBM, Pax8, Abacus Solutions Group and other technology-focused businesses, and the campus has hosted professional teams and visitors from around Colorado and across the country.
That creates an unusual combination: small-town overhead and lifestyle with access to technology infrastructure, professional networks, workforce programs and business resources normally associated with much larger communities.
Antiques are an important part of Florence's identity—but they are only part of the story.
Florence can be a place to open an antique store or bookstore. It can be a place to launch a technology company, work remotely, open a restaurant, create a new product, buy an affordable commercial building, start a second career or turn an idea into a business.
It is a town where historic preservation, entrepreneurship, technology, tourism, retail, art, food and small business can exist side by side.
You might spend your morning working from a technology campus, walk downtown for lunch, browse an antique store in the afternoon and attend a community event that evening.
That mixture is part of what makes Florence interesting.
If Junktique, the Florence Merchants Car Show, our antique stores or historic Main Street brought you here for the first time, take another look around.
Behind the historic storefronts and small-town character is a community experimenting with new businesses, new technology, workforce development and a different approach to rural economic growth.
Florence isn't trying to become another Denver or Boulder.
It offers something different: a historic Colorado town where you can build a business, work in technology, own property, know your neighbors and still be connected to opportunities well beyond the city limits.
And just a couple of blocks from Main Street, Emergent Campus is helping make that possible.
