owners,” says Anastasiya Rogatnik, who runs her foreign-language instruction and translation business Lingo Rocket from a Gather location in Richmond. “If I need legal advice, I can go to a law firm next door. If I need help with my taxes, I can go to an accountant. … [I] just love the feeling of having different businesses literally next door to my office. If I have a question, I don’t even have to go outside of the building. I just have to walk down the hallway and get any assistance that I need.” Amenities also are a key draw of
coworking spaces, ranging from the open- bar, beer-on-tap provided by WeWork in some states to the gym memberships and podcast studio offered by Percolator or the fresh-baked cookies served on Wednesdays at Gather. In February, Ali Greenberg opened
The Broad, a coworking space in Rich- mond dedicated to building community and providing social experiences and coworking space for women and gender minorities. The Broad eschews desks and dedicated office spaces in favor of communal lounges with a modern design.
Its 160 members include entrepreneurs and teleworkers who pay a $150 month- to-month fee, as well as “social” members who pay a reduced $75 month-to-month membership fee, which includes access to The Broad’s numerous perks. “We do two weekly yoga classes …
[and] we have office hours every single Friday with lawyers, accountants [and] personal finance professionals,” Greenberg says. “We get discounts at lots of local women-run businesses, and we put on a lot of our own programs that members all get free access to — everything from business-related stuff, like how to get an intern, to life stuff: travel … health and wellness, politics. It kind of runs the gamut.”
Scaling up or down Coworking spaces are so popular
that some larger landlords are looking at starting coworking businesses themselves in order to lease out their vacant build- ings and large office spaces, says Jonathan Koes, a research manager with Cushman & Wakefield|Thalhimer. There are risks inherent in operating
a coworking space, including the up-front expenses for setting up the space. Addi- tionally, relying on individual tenants to pay on a month-by-month basis isn’t as stable or secure as the traditional model of signing one corporate tenant to a long- term, three-year or five-year lease. Ultimately, though, says Koes, “you’re
going to command larger rents and get more dollars per square foot on an indi- vidual basis when you’re renting a desk versus an office.” While the desire for community and
opportunities to socialize and network are large components driving the growth of coworking spaces (“massive,” says Poplin), it’s also an affordable way for startups and small businesses to have professional workspaces and scale up (or down) as needed without expensive long-term lease commitments. “I don’t need a conference room 24
hours a day; I don’t need a kitchen 24 hours a day. I only need fractional use of those spaces. And that’s what coworking allows you to do,” Dudley says. “It just seems to be a perfect model for a 21st- century company.”
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