Coworking A New Way To Do Business
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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Coworking spaces are filling up empty offices in Downtown Dallas. The City Center is now home to eight coworking businesses and non-profits; more than a dozen are scattered throughout North Texas.
Coworking, where entrepreneurs and small business owners can lease a desk or space with access to large office amenities, is becoming a new way to do business. The idea formed in San Francisco a decade ago, but only took off in Dallas in the last couple of years. Downtown Dallas, Inc. says some 60,000 square feet of space in the downtown area is now occupied by coworkers.
The Dallas Entrepreneur Center offers space for start-ups to work plus mentoring, promotion, and training services, and access to capital. For people like Robert Neely, The DEC is helping his business grow. "Being somewhere like here is invigorating, because you get to be around people and collaborate. It's encouraging for us versus being at home and being alone, or being at a coffee shop and being super distracted," said Neely.
Neely runs a website InspireMore.com, to collect and create inspiring content on the web.
Since becoming a member of The DEC, he's added two more employees. The company rents a designated work space for a monthly fee out of The DEC offices in the West End.
"This is the way they like to work. They like to work in environments that look like this," said The DEC co-founder and CEO Trey Bowles. The DEC opened in the Design District in 2013, and moved to the West End last summer.
The non-profit served 150 companies last year, and Bowles says as more people join the space in the West End, the area is gaining a new vibe. The West End is now home to more than a dozen digital ad agencies, plus tech-driven companies like Uber and Zip Car.
"Just in the last couple of weeks you've got multiple buildings selling in this area," said Bowles. "When you walk outside the door and we walk around and see people we know every day, it's super exciting. There's a community building downtown here."
Also in the West End are White Space, which offers space for off-site meetings, and another coworking site, The Grove. The Grove opened in September 2013 in the West End, and initially served six members.
One year later, the owners knocked down walls and doubled the space in size. "It's been based on response, which is really interesting with the coworking movement in general in Dallas," said Justin Nygren.
Nygren is co-owner of The Grove. His business partner Ken Janke founded the first space in New Haven, Connecticut eight years ago, before bringing The Grove to his hometown. The Grove's 80 business and non-profit members today have a focus on social issues or social causes.
Nygren says it's been exciting to watch the coworking movement grow in Downtown Dallas – especially in the West End. "This was an amazing entertainment district in the80s and 90s. What we've been pitching is to say, let us help build what we're calling an innovation district," Nygren said.
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