Hartford Business Journal

14 Hartford Business Journal • July 30, 2018 • www.HartfordBusiness.com By Gregory Seay gseay@HartfordBusiness.com T he landlord-owners of the Six Central Row office building in downtown Hartford are plying what they hope to become a more versatile coworking-space model for monetizing excess office space. Connecticut techpreneurs Garold Miller and Dan Weinstein, creators/ marketers of the globally successful HALO portable electronic charger, bought the 15,700-square-foot, four- story office building opposite the Old State House, as HALO's headquarters. Now, they've turned the heavily renovated first floor into coworking office space, called Central Row. "It's a very professional, very luxuri- ous place to have a meeting," Central Row sales associate Brett Kahn, who as- sisted the HALO landlords in setup and marketing, said during a recent public walk-through of the approximately 3,700-square-foot coworking space. Central Row joins a burgeoning ros- ter of new and pending Hartford area coworking outposts, which have grown in popularity across the U.S. as land- lords adapt to a digital economy that requires less office space. Coworking spaces are also seen as a way to attract entrepreneurs to city centers. Other Hartford players include Think Synergy, a hybrid coworking/co-living set up with office space and apartments in the Cast Iron Building, 242 Asylum St. There's also Upward Hartford in the Stilts Building, 20 Church St.; reSET on Hartford's Park Street; and Manches- ter's town-owned coworking space at 903 Main St. Meantime, MakerSpaceCT signed a lease late last year to outfit more than 20,000 square feet at the G. Fox Building on Main Street into a coworking space targeting artists, technologists, and entrepreneurs. Operator Devra Sisitsky said the space is open for classes, but will not open to MakerSpace members until Jan. 2019. Another so-called makerspace, which allows hobbyists, hackers and oth- ers to hone their skills on 3D printers, CNC machines, laser cutters, etc., operates on 30 Arbor St. It's called MakeHartford. In West Hart- ford's Blue Back Square flexible workspace pro- vider Spaces has signed a lease to occupy the more than 25,733-square feet vacated by outdoor retailer REI. Spaces is part of IWS Group, British parent of leading U.S. coworking- space vendor Regus, which has several Connecticut locations including Hart- ford (100 Pearl St.), West Hartford and Windsor. Coworking spaces and their ten- ants and landlords are very close kin to traditional office-space providers and their occupants, except for one monu- mental exception: Occupants pay a set fee, or rent, to use coworking space for a short, finite period measured in days and weeks vs. the traditional model of tenant-landlord brokers hashing out fees and terms for space usually for two or more years. Kane Willmott, a Canadian cowork- ing landlord and president of the Global Workspace Association, said coworking's grow- ing popularity is tied to the rise of the internet, which is unbundling many traditional professional ser- vices and making them more acces- sible to a con- sumer base that is more demanding. Coworking emerged in North America in 2010, during the Great Recession, and still only accounts for barely a sliver of the overall U.S. of- fice-space market. However, cowork- ing spaces and lead vendors like Regus and New York-based WeWork have permanently altered the office landscape, observers say. "The biggest thing coworking [space] has done is reduce the friction from the price of acquiring office space,'' said Willmott, who is also co-founder and CEO of iQ Office Suites in Toronto. IQ, which has four coworking sites in Toronto, and one in Vancouver, Brit- ish Columbia, is eyeing U.S. expansion sites, but he declined to elaborate. Regus in 2010 had over 1,000 cowork- ing locations vs. one for WeWork, Will- mott said, citing a Jones Lang Lasalle survey. Today, Regus counts more than 3,000 locations and WeWork more than 270. Coworking spaces, Willmott said, allow compa- nies or individuals to more quickly and more flexibly contract for office space. Cowork- ing landlords can realize returns of 20 percent or more on their subscription spaces through add-on services, he said, than the 5 to 7 percent yield on an office build- ing whose returns are heavily tied to the prospect of that building be- ing fully occupied during its inves- tors' ownership. However, own- ing and operating coworking spaces also carries risks, Willmott said. One is limited access to bank loans or other low-cost capital be- cause many coworking-space operators are office tenants themselves, rather than owners of the property that could Shared Spaces Greater Hartford's roster of coworking locations expands BY THE NUMBERS Coworking space 14,411 The approximate number of coworking spaces around the world. 22,300 sq. ft. The average flexible workspace size, which is an increase from 15,000 square feet two years ago. 27M The square footage of office space that coworking now takes up across the U.S. 3.8M The number of coworking members that are expected to exist by 2020. Source: All Work Downtown Hartford's roster of shared office space, known as "coworking space,'' has expanded lately, with the opening of Central Row on the ground floor of Six Central Row. Dan Weinstein, Co-founder, HALO Garold Miller, Co-founder, HALO PHOTOS | CONTRIBUTED

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