Minneapolis attorney K.M. Davis used to rent office space for his solo practice but said he felt lonely and “stifled.” He tried coffee shops but loathed their lack of privacy. Working at home didn’t work, either; he lacked a professional-looking meeting space and felt silly working in his jammies.
Then Davis happened upon a downtown Minneapolis “coworking” space called CoCo, and it was as if angels sang.
“I was in love from the moment I walked through the door,” said Davis, who now makes frequent use of the communal workspace with its dozens of laptop stations, cushy seating for impromptu meetings, dedicated “campsites” for work teams, separate conference areas for formal confabs and coffee — lots of coffee.
CoCo, which also has an outpost in downtown St. Paul, is one of a number of coworking spaces in the Twin Cities for those wanting to rent workspace by the day, week or month. The human connection is key to coworking, since it creates opportunities for otherwise-isolated workers to socialize, collaborate on projects, teach each other and expand their professional networks.
Twin Cities coworking facilities range from the relatively modest, such as WorkAround in Minneapolis and the 3rd Place in St. Paul, to the majestic — CoCo Minneapolis is ensconced in the vast and airy digs once taken up by the Minneapolis Grain Exchange.
CoCo is short for Coworking and Collaborative Space.
“CoCo, the St. Paul and of course the Minneapolis location, are far and above the most beautiful, comfortable spaces I’ve worked from,” said Davis, now a coworking fanatic who seeks out such sites around the United States. “I do what I love, and now that I am at CoCo, I do it in a place I love, which is often the missing piece for small-business owners.”
ORGANIC START, GLOBAL TREND
Coworking once was a fringe movement for tech geeks and arts types. But it has entered the mainstream in recent years.
In the Twin Cities, the project began somewhat organically. A group of techies — workers and entrepreneurs — took over a South Minneapolis coffee shop for the month of November in 2009, as an experiment, so they could see how they liked working together.
“We were hooked,” said Don Ball, one of the participants. “These were the kinds of people you like to meet at tech conferences, so why not have them as your co-workers?”
This led the group to plan a formal coworking facility. A friend in downtown St. Paul let them use vacant office space at 213 E. 4th St. without locking them into a lease, and the first CoCo began as a grand, open-ended experiment.
It faced hardship from the start. Light-rail construction kicked off outside the building the day CoCo opened in January 2010, Ball recalled. The heating conked out one day as he was giving a would-be business partner a tour, and the Wi-Fi failed during a blogger conference.
Yet, CoCo St. Paul endures at the same location, which now functions near-flawlessly.
Eight months after CoCo St. Paul opened, the office of Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak enticed Ball and his partner Kyle Coolbroth across the river and, eventually, into their 16,000-square-foot second home at 400 S. 4th St.
Deskmag, a site that monitors coworking activity, counted 1,800 coworking facilities around the world in August. That’s up from 1,320 in early 2012, and a 93 percent jump from August 2011.
Deskmag counts 684 coworking spaces in the United States and 729 in the European Union. New York, London and Berlin are considered the global coworking hotspots, but Australia, Japan and Brazil are said to be coming on strong.
Coworking also is keeping up with the tech times. A number of online services, such as Loosecubes and LiquidSpace, now provide directories of coworking spaces and permit their users to reserve time at such complexes for free or a fee via the Web or phone apps.
HIGH-TECH AND HOMINESS
CoCo Minneapolis is a place of jarring contrasts. Its soaring ceilings and windows blend with high-tech touches, such as a section of the old grain-exchange trading board that has been rigged to display tweets, music tracks and weather info.
Conversations blend into a background buzz punctuated by the music the coworking denizens crave, or at least tolerate.
Coffee is complimentary, and the crowd goes through lots of it — about 32 airport-style dispensers, or about seven pounds of beans a day.
CoCo St. Paul is more understated, with an exposed-brick-and-ducts architecture, yet with a spectacular view of the under-renovation Union Depot across the street. It is the homier of the CoCos, with an apartment-style kitchen for coffee, networking and socializing.
Ball and Coolbroth lease their St. Paul and Minneapolis space from building owners, as traditional tenants do, with standard-issue liability insurance. Coworking customers, in turn, pay $50 a month for one-day-a-week privileges, $150 a month for three days, or $250 for unlimited use during business hours.
The CoCo organization, and especially its Minneapolis branch, has achieved a national profile and drawn highly-visible visitors, such as Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt. Google retained a modest presence at CoCo Minneapolis earlier this month, with two employees paying by the day for use of the facility.
LOCAL COWORKING EXPANDS
The two CoCos now have plenty of competition.
In the St. Anthony Park section of St. Paul, the 3rd Space provides cozy digs for a range of customers, such as software developers, freelance marketers, environmental activists and a poet.
“The vibe is pretty quiet,” compared with the always-buzzing CoCo, said 3rd Space Executive Director Jon Schumacher. “It provides some collegiality but isn’t a crazy and noisy place to meet clients.”
WorkAround in downtown Minneapolis’ warehouse district also is small and intimate at barely 2,400 square feet, providing “a very casual, quiet place for those who want to get stuff done,” said co-founder Buffie Blesi, who runs it with husband John Burns.
WorkAround’s marquee amenity is professional coaching in a wide variety of categories, a byproduct of Blesi’s second, older career as a work coach.
Laptop warriors should expect a slightly more elevated decibel level at Minneapolis-based Joule, which founder Jackie Menne describes as “louder than a library but quieter than a coffee shop.” Clientele range from those in jeans to those in business suits, said Menne, who places an emphasis on networking.
ArtsHub, one of the more offbeat coworking spaces in the Twin Cities, is a service of the Intermedia Arts nonprofit arts center in South Minneapolis. ArtsHub caters to “creative” individuals and groups — though associate director Julie Bates emphasizes the facility is available to all.
“The atmosphere is vibrant, participatory and social,” said Bates, who notes that ArtsHub offers lunches, artist talks, happy hours and table tennis.
INTERACTING
At CoCo Minneapolis, meanwhile, freelance Web developer Ian Fitzpatrick is loving how he is forced to interact with people, which he knows is important for drumming up business.
“Most technical people like me have an aversion to networking,” Fitzpatrick said. “I had zero network to lean on six months ago.
“But since I began coworking, that has completely changed,” he added. “This has had a real financial impact on me. My CoCo membership has paid for itself about a hundred times over.”
Julio Ojeda-Zapata writes about consumer technology. Read him at ojezap.com/writing. Reach him at 651-315-7090 or on social networks at ojezap.com/social.
