116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Co-working spaces offer flexibility as workers seek ‘new normal’
It’s a way to separate your work space from your home space
It was state of the art in 1993: a glass-and-steel building with a cafeteria and other amenities on a 16-acre campus to house most of AEGON’s 1,100 Cedar Rapids employees.
The COVID-19 pandemic and 30 years of improved technology have left the future of office parks like that one — AEGON moved on — but a multinational corporation is betting that a new way of working may have a place there.
International Workplace Group, a British holding company, plans to open one of its Regus co-working spaces at 4515 N. River Blvd. NE later this year.
The space will be group’s fifth Regus-branded space in Iowa.
The International Workplace Group has more than 1,000 locations in the U.S., with plans to open 500 in the next few years, including several in the Midwest “as the demand for hybrid working continues to grow,” the company said in a statement.
MERGE Iowa City
Locally owned co-working spaces have received new interest from both workers and their bosses as business finds its way toward work’s new normal.
“We only had a handful (of members) that dropped off and stopped their memberships” during the pandemic, said Erin Pottebaum, director of operations for the Iowa City Area Development Group. “As people started to travel around more, we actually saw an increase in late 2021. We’ve been on a steady increase in memberships.”
ICAD operates the MERGE Iowa City co-working space at 136 S. Dubuque St. and CoWork@808 at 808 Fifth St. in Coralville. It also cooperates with privately owned North Liberty CoLab on Highway 151.
About 60 percent of MERGE members are working remotely for their employers, with the balance being entrepreneurs and startups, Pottebaum said.
The Vault in Cedar Rapids
The only active co-working space in Cedar Rapids is The Vault, which is owned and operated by NewBoCo in southeast Cedar Rapids. About half of its clients are self-employed, according to John Foster, The Vault’s community manager.
“We have always focused on freelancers and remote workers,” Foster said. “What has changed is that we are targeting teams at companies more than we used to.”
Co-working spaces appeal to freelancers who want to maintain boundaries between home and work, according to Foster.
“I’m mostly a graphic designer and was a freelancer when I started here,” Foster said. “I just hated working and living in the same place. Some people love it. The people we serve don’t. They want the environment and the office amenities.”
Some employers have taken space at The Vault for workers on hybrid schedules.
“Post-COVID, people are hiring people from a wider range now,” Foster said. “We’ve had employers from other cities rent space here for their Cedar Rapidian workers.”
Remote working popular
Just 6 percent of 8,000 employees surveyed by Gallup last summer said they wanted to return to the office full-time, and their bosses seem to have gotten the message.
Fifty-five percent of workers reported they expected to work hybrid schedules, with 22 percent expecting to work completely remotely this year.
“There is still this struggle between employers and employees in terms of how much time in the office is enough,” said Jennifer Nahrgang, professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, who has tracked the back-to-workplace movement.
“One of the benefits people like about hybrid work is not being in an office.”
Co-working spaces can fill that role, Foster said. And while some co-working spaces have struggled to keep their doors open in the past, they may become a more permanent fixture in our working world, she said.
“I believe they are more likely to survive, in that there’s has been a trend away from the big office building,” he said. “And for those people being asked to work from home, it can be really hard. A place like ours suits them perfectly.”
Pottebaum, in Iowa City, said co-working spaces can be part of employers’ compromise strategy.
“It can also be seen as a cost savings, with downsizing office space and giving allowances for remote workers access to work outside the home,” she said.
“If the co-working space is close to the office, that may be a benefit,” the UI’s Nahrgang said. “They’re able to separate work and family, and, for some, that can be really important.”
Clients enjoy being around their “co-workers,” even if they’re working for different employers.
“It’s a matter of building that community,” Pottebaum said. “The people who come in to see us often simply say, ‘I need to get out of the house.’ The human connection is one we’re offering.”
Added Foster: “The thing that happens here is, we sort of work with each other but we don’t work with each other. We can get grumpy with what we’re working on because we’re not all working on the same thing. We get the plus side of working with different people.”
Regus space
Plans for the new Regus’ co-working space call for it to occupy 15,775 square feet of the 81,720-square-foot complex. It is to include private offices, co-working and collaboration spaces, meeting rooms and a host of tech services, like IT support, the company said.
After AEGON moved most of its local employees — about 900 as of October 2022 — to southwest Cedar Rapids, the financial services firm sold the complex last July to Utah-based 1031 Pros LLC for just over $7 million, according to city assessor’s records.
Pottebaum said Regus facilities cater to a different clientele than those at MERGE and The Vault. Regus will provide a staffed front desk, a phone-answering service and business suites catering to out-of-town corporate workers on brief stays.
“We’re functional, not fancy, and just cool enough,” Pottebaum said of the MERGE spaces. “We may not have matching chairs.”
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