Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two or so years, you’ve probably noticed that co-working spaces are trending in the commercial real estate world. (And in the event that you have been living under a rock, newsflash: co-working is officially a thing.)  In fact,  it has grown more than 10% across the United States in the past year. At Beckerman/Antenna, we’ve experienced the evolution of the shared office space movement firsthand.

 

Our first shared space – the company’s New York office — was nothing fancy but certainly had the essentials: a place to plug in my laptop and Tweet to my heart’s content. Three of my Antenna colleagues and I sat in one small room with a round table and a few chairs. Most days felt like I was meeting up with three friends at a very small un-decorated coffee shop to pitch media and hashtag the hours away, as opposed to “going to work.” Sharing a room immediately blurs the lines of personal/individual space, and (almost) anything goes. Need to bounce a pitch off your colleagues? Go for it. Got a conference call? Invest in a solid pair of headphones. We didn’t have the ping-pong table or cereal bar our New Jersey counterparts were accustomed to, but being in a shared space kept the creative juices flowing just the same.

 

Then we moved to Grind: “a members-only shared workspace and coworking community.” less than five blocks away but a major working environment upgrade. We went from our small round table for four — and keeping tabs on one another’s whereabouts with ease (picture Friendsgiving on the daily) — to a large room for ten people. And that’s within an even larger communal space comprising lounges, rentable conference rooms, private telephone booths and a section dubbed the “quiet” room, with adult-sized cubbies and enclosed futon-like beds. Remember that conference call? Now you can swap out headphones for a mini phone booth. Looking to do some writing? Curl up on a couch in the library. Writer’s block got you down? Hit up the meditation room.

 

As with everything, there are pros and cons, but the co-working pros definitely outweigh the cons:

 

Pros:

• Ability to do your own thing (if you’re wondering if I’m in the library at this very moment, the answer is yes)

• Tight-knit company culture, minus the hierarchy #SquadGoals
• Ability to bounce ideas and pitches off one another with immediate feedback
• An office concierge who ensures that all is up to par — aka free bagels every Monday and fresh coffee every day, sans dirty dishes
• Weekly happy hours, complete with pop-culture-infused signature drinks (Where else can you drink the tears of Taylor Swift?)
• Ability to work out of any Grind location in New York City (1216 Broadway &1412 Broadway are our two favorite spots)
• Access to a large network of resources via fellow co-working companies
• No cubicles. Bye, Felicia.

 

Cons:

• It’s sometimes difficult to locate teammates. Bueller? Bueller?
• Lack of privacy
• It can be hard to find a truly “quiet” place to work on the rare occasion that telephone booths and conference rooms are all taken

 

Co-working may not be for everyone, but it’s our sworn duty as real estate and tech gurus to jump into these trends headfirst, especially on Bagel Monday.