A few days before Christmas, I walk into the now defunct Spacious location in Brooklyn. It was 10 am. John, one of two hosts at the co-working space, greeted me when I entered. John assumes I’ve been there before and understand the check in process on the tablet. I could have probably figured it out, but I want to get the lay of the land, so I ask. John quickly gets up from behind his station to walk me through how to check in and purchase my day pass. He explains that next week the location will be running on limited holiday hours and the following week, they’ll be shutting down. I give him my apologies and ask why.
With only the briefest look of surprise at my feigned ignorance, he explains that WeWork had recently purchased Spacious and decided to liquidate it. As a dutiful employee, he shows no disdain, and simply says, “it’s better for everyone,” which prompts me to ask if the original founders are intending to give it another try. Not that he’s aware.
John then shows me where to hang my coat, where the coffee, tea, and microwave are, how to get to the bathroom, where the outlets are located, and tells me to sit anywhere I like. There are plenty of options. He explains that it isn’t too busy with people leaving town for the holidays. I count 10 other users sitting sporadically throughout the space at what is deemed a polite distance apart. I hang my coat on one of the wooden hangers embossed with “Spacious” and sit down.
Spacious’ Fulton at Rockwell location is ideally situated in the base of the new Ashland development in a bustling area near downtown. It’s fairly quiet except for the sound of typing and lulled conversations. An immense sliding barn door separates the co-working space from the rest of the Gotham Market food court, and it appears to have once functioned as a sushi bar. Empty shelves, sparse décor, and an overall lack of food tell me I won’t be eating shrimp tempura once 8 o’ clock rolls around. If this were a restaurant actually open for business, my day-pass would expire at 5 pm instead of 8, lest the restaurant miss out on prime dinner hours. But like so many commercial spaces throughout the city, it’s not open for business, and the owners of this space are losing dollars.
Stroll through any major city in the United States and you’re sure to find an excess of completely built out, potentially useful, vacant spaces. Whether it’s a restaurant only open for dinner or a vacant retailer, there is no lack of finished, usable space. Spacious saw these vacancies as opportunities and sought to occupy them by creating cost effective co-working spaces that also generated additional income for landlords. Primarily, they found restaurants that were closed during the day and converted them into co-working space for urban professionals. This business model was appetizing enough for WeWork (renamed The We Company) to acquire Spacious for $42.5 million this past August. Fast forward four months later, and as of December 31st 2019, WeWork shut Spacious down. What went wrong?
To answer that question, it’s important to understand why co-working spaces have grown into a multi-billion dollar industry in recent years. Is it possible co-working is simply a fad spurred on by office envy and lofty idealisms meant to inspire productivity? Based on trends within the American (and global) workforce, probably not. The largest online community for remote workers, We Work Remotely, explains that both “workers and companies realize the benefits of a distributed workforce” which accounts for it’s “tremendous growth over the last 5 years.” According to Upwork’s Freelancing in America study, published in September 2019, this tremendous growth translates to “57 million Americans [who] free-lanced this year, representing 35% of the U.S. workforce.”