By All Means

The pandemic called into question everything that made coworking desirable: shared work areas, in-person networking. But industry pioneer Don Ball has seen work culture trends cycle more than once before. And indeed, demand for flexible workspaces is already swinging back. “Hybrid work opens an opportunity for coworking—it’s a professional office that’s not your home, and not your [company] HQ. If you have one close to where you live, I think what we’re going to see is suburban coworking…do really well.” The opportunity in 2021 is not unlike what inspired Ball to get into coworking more than a decade ago. A career freelancer, Ball recalls “going stir crazy” working by himself at home in the mid-1990s. He rented an office, just to get out of the house and remembers thinking: “What if I invited others to join me? It seemed like a goofy idea at the time.” Laptop computers and high-speed internet made it more feasible. In 2010, Ball and partner Kyle Coolbroth got a good deal on a vacant space in the Lowertow