After an initial hesitancy to join The Nest student board, junior Hope Ramsperger said she now appreciates the opportunity to be an active role in her community.

“I didn’t want to join at first, but I am really glad I did because it’s really fun, and you gain a lot of skills from being in it like business skills, how to talk with city representatives or just being part of something that the community needs,” Ramsperger said.

According to The Nest leader Julia Schmelzer, The Nest board envisions a coffee shop styled space for Park students to do homework or hangout.

“The coffee shop is kind of the working vision that we have, so a place where people can go and hang out,” Schmelzer said. “I think it would look like an authentic coffee shop that doesn’t look like a chain.”

Schmelzer said the new hangout space has become a working non-profit organization with established objectives and bylaws.

“We’ve pretty much declared that we are going to open the first day of school next year. We’ve additionally become a non-profit organization (…) so all of the work we needed to do to get that non-profit status with the state and at the federal level,” Schmelzer said. “We had to create our vision and our mission statement (and) our articles of incorporation and our bylaws.”

Schmelzer said the next steps will be to start looking for a location for The Nest to takeover.

“Our next big thing is to find the location, and there are different buildings on Lake Street over by Park Yogurt that we are looking at,” Schmelzer said. “ We need to go and tour some of those places and select which place we think is going to be the best place to get started.”

Senior Lukas Wrede, a member of the development committee for The Nest, said the board members have been advertising and circulating news about The Nest through fundraisers and social media.

“We are partnering with Muddy Paws Cheesecake, and we just did a networking at (their fundraiser). (We’re) just getting the word out about The Nest and talking about donations and hopefully getting people involved as well,” Wrede said.

According to Wrede, the coffee shop will have a bona fide, modern ambience.

“Our motto is ‘We’re the youngest coffee shop in St. Louis Park,’ and so we want to have that sort of feel and vibe to it there,” Wrede said. “You can have fun, be able to relax and have a good time, and it’s a place where students can go and feel comfortable because they are with people their age.”

Wrede said not many people feel they have a space where they can be themselves, and The Nest is trying to improve that type of thinking.

“(The Nest) is a space they can have to themselves and do whatever they want in it. Most people think of that as their home, but for a lot of people that’s not the case, and they don’t have a good home situation that doesn’t provide that space for them or it’s just not adequate for them,” Wrede said. “We want to give students a space where they can feel comfortable doing whatever they want to do.”

For more information about The Nest, visit slpnest.org.