NewBoCo: Vault offers office away from home

CEDAR RAPIDS — When Jordan Bergren decided to quit his day job and start his own business, he quickly realized that working from home wasn’t for him.

“I would get wrapped up in everything, just working all the time with no delineation between work mode and home mode or family mode,” he says. “It was super inefficient, and I wasn’t taking care of myself. So after six months of that, I made the decision to start checking out coworking spots.”

One of the first places he looked was the Vault Coworking Space in Cedar Rapids’ Geonetric Building, 415 12th Ave. SE. Right away, he knew he’d found the right fit.

“Having a place like Vault, you show up and you have your brain kind of turn on, like ‘OK, I’m going to work now,’” he said. “I just like being around other people. It kind of gives you that energy, hearing other conversations going on.”

Building a community

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Bergren isn’t alone.

According to John Foster, the community manager at the Vault Coworking Space, the advantage of being part of a community — even when you are your own boss — is what makes people stay.

“There are a lot of people who don’t particularly care for working from home and feel like they need to figure something out,” Foster said. “Maybe they’re looking for an office, or maybe they just need to be around people and be part of a community.”

Coworking spaces like the Vault feature freelance workers and remote workers who don’t report to their employers’ offices. Yet it offers similar amenities to an office building, including printers, a cafeteria and conference rooms.

“People imagine that working in the same space as a lot of other people will make it tough to concentrate,” he added. “But it really is a great working environment, with a lot of opportunities for collaboration.”

Making connections

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For Raine Hayden, the people who work around her at Vault have become her “unofficial co-workers.”

“I first joined Vault because I needed to get out of the house, but now, I come because I enjoy seeing the people,” she said. “We all have different jobs and goals, but we’re all supportive of each other. The other members are people I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise, but now I consider them my friends and co-workers.”

One of those “co-workers,” Jessica Abdoney of NewBoCo, became friends with Hayden by having nearby desks at Vault. After going to a few Whiskey Friday events together after work, Abdoney mentioned that she was going to Scotland in the fall of 2023. Hayden says she jokingly asked if she could come along.

“She said ‘yes!’ and the joke started to become a real plan,” Hayden said. “Jessica went over before me and spent a month in Edinburgh on her own, and I joined her on her last week. We spent a week exploring Scotland together and from there, flew to Italy.”

The two say they’ve become good friends as a result.

“I love that I have 'co-workers' who aren't co-workers and sharing a space with people who have skills in other areas, have different expertise, and have different views,” Abdoney says. “It's fun to be able to make friends in a working space, while not requiring a coworker relationship, which can strain friendships. I love getting to come in and see new and familiar faces.”

How to join

There are multiple ways to join the Vault community.

Day passes allow occasional users or visitors to try out the space. A community membership provides access a few days a month. And a resident nembership provides a full array of 24/7services.

The space also allows first-time users to try the space free for a day. To learn more, visit https://newbo.co/vault-coworking/

Vault offers conference rooms, private phone rooms, cafe and kitchen access, complimentary beverages and snacks, free off-street parking and indoor bike storage.

Four years on from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vault has fully bounced back to being the vibrant community that it was before 2020, Foster said.

“During the pandemic, Vault was empty,” he says. “But then, slowly and surely, we started getting those people who want to try it out, just like back when we started in 2015. And they’re saying ‘Hey, this works for me.’ Today we've got a good collection of people, and it's a great community again.”

Rob Merritt is director of communications at NewBoCo. Comments: rob@newbo.co