Greater Wilmington Business Journal
wilmingtonbiz.com
April 2 - 15, 2021
Page 23
| REAL ESTATE | Pandemic sparks office evolution Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of a story that appears in the latest Real Estate Issue of WilmingtonBiz Magazine. To read more, visit WilmingtonBizMagazine.com. BY JOHANNA CANO arly wake-up alarms used to give many office workers enough time to get ready, drop kids off at school and head to the office. After greeting the office pet and saying “good morning” to coworkers, many would sip coffee while checking emails and getting ready for a meeting. That all ended suddenly for workers as many offices closed last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. This changed where and how many workers operate. And while some may be back to some form of normalcy, others are still relying on their home offices, dining tables, laptops and more recently, coworking spaces, to get things done. With COVID-19 protocols, some workplaces are seeing a fraction of their usual traffic and others may have gone completely remote. Take California-based software company Salesforce.com Inc. Its leadership team prophetically announced earlier this year that the “9-to-5 workday is dead” and that workers may now choose to work remotely permanently. Even before the pandemic, though, a new take on the office space known as coworking spaces started sprouting in big cities in the U.S., from WeWork to Venture X. And in the past few years, cities such as Wilmington, Charlotte and Raleigh have also experienced their share of the rise in these spaces.
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A SENSE OF COMMUNITY
Coworking spaces are filling a need for those who miss the structure and sense of community gained from a work office, said Aaron Ellis, Wilmington community manager for Dallas-based Common Desk. The space, which opened Jan. 18 in downtown Wilmington, joined other dedicated coworking spaces in the city, including Blue Mind Coworking, tekMountain, Genesis Block and Coworx. A smaller, growing city like Wilmington was the right spot for a new Common Desk location, Ellis said. “We were looking for a mar-
PHOTO BY MEGAN DEITZ
Office space anywhere: People work inside Common Desk in downtown Wilmington. Common Desk is one of the new coworking spaces that have opened recently as more people work remotely.
ket that wasn’t too enormous that we could come in and actually be noticed,” Ellis said about opening in Wilmington. “You drop something like this in middle of San Francisco, and you’re sort of white noise. This downtown area has a local, Southern hospitality-type feel, and that’s who we are.” The coworking space, at 226 N. Front St., is located on all three floors of the historical Gaylord Building, totaling 22,000 square feet. The space, empty since the 1980s, underwent an extensive renovation by Monteith Construction Corp. that included gutting the building. The modernized building, complete with a coffee shop, preserved many aspects of the historical building including its brick walls and repurposed pine floor joists. With 35 private offices, 15,000 square feet of common space, four large suites and amenities, Common Desk hopes to attract a diverse group of members who seek to be productive and most of all, a sense of community. “We have found that so many people are craving some sort of rhythm in their life for work. Working from home was fun for about the first month and then the reality of it kicked in,” Ellis said. “I think a lot of people didn’t realize how important work community was to them until
they didn’t have it anymore.”
‘THE NETWORKING AND THE INTERACTION’
Another new coworking space that also seeks to tap into the need for a collective workplace is Blue Mind. With a slated opening in April at 301 Government Center Drive, founders Michael and Julie Donlon wanted to provide a collaborative space that promotes business growth. With the temporary physical closure of tekMountain due to COVID, the Donlons wanted to create a similar space to serve individuals, solopreneurs and small teams, but also the community. “Our larger mission is for the space to foster innovation and business growth, which creates more jobs and keeps talented entrepreneurs and small businesses local,” Michael Donlon said. Blue Mind provides dedicated desks, private offices, conference
rooms and meeting and event spaces. Memberships are provided monthly and include amenities. The pandemic accelerated many employers’ experiments in remote working, Michael Donlon said. “I think a lot of employers were a little reticent to do [remote working] just because of loss of control or what have you, but what they are finding is that their employees remain productive and stepped up to the challenge,” he said. “I think the trend was headed that way. This just accelerated the speed that we got there.” While there are a lot of pluses in remote working, one thing that people start to miss is human interaction, Donlon said. “When people come into Blue Mind, they certainly ask about the space and the capabilities, but invariably, they ask about the networking and the interaction,” he said. “It’s not just a coworking space. It’s an opportunity for networking with like-minded professionals and sharing ideas and challenges.”
WHAT’S NORMAL ANYMORE?
As coworking spaces start to accommodate remote workers in a new office model, many traditional office spaces have started adopting a new model as well. Copycat Print Shop in Wilmington has 10 employees all working on-site. The company, however, has created and used a mitigation plan for COVID-19 scares that includes working remotely, rotating shifts and separating workers at different ends of its office. Along with air purifiers, the office space has installed acrylic shields along its front counter and dividers between workers, among other measures. When asked if the office might ever go back to “normal,” Copycat Owner Betsy Kahn said, “Normal … what’s normal anymore? Hard to predict what the future holds. ”
ALSO FEATURED IN THE LATEST WILMINGTONBIZ MAGAZINE REAL ESTATE ISSUE: • how mixed-use is mixing up building projects; • profiles of industry professionals; • signature projects of local architects; • industry trends and market stats; and much more.
