Cowork Frederick’s Grand (re)Opening

As I write this, I’m filled with gratitude, awe, and the weary satisfaction that comes with completing a challenging project. It’s been a long journey, so there’s also a good amount of joy that comes with this announcement:

ADD TO MY CALENDAR

We’re done! Let’s Party!

We’re celebrating Cowork Frederick’s Grand (re)Opening April 20th from 4-7 pm with a ribbon cutting, live music, refreshments, door prizes, and tours of our newly renovated space. Even if you came to our 10-year anniversary party back in September 2022, you don’t want to miss this event.

The Backstory

When I met Glen, we both worked from home, doing our ‘corporate America’ jobs and, like so many, also our own side gigs. Working from home has its plusses, but we both found the isolation draining. It’s just not healthy to be in a room by yourself all day staring at a computer screen. Glen, an avid reader, learned about something called “coworking” and told me about it. That was back in 2007 and, at the time, coworking was a fairly new concept. We were newly married and loved the idea so much, we knew we wanted to be a part of the grass-roots movement to change how people work. Fast-forward a few years, past choosing Frederick to be our home, a few GCUC conferences to learn more about how to build that coworking community, and there we are renovating a building at 122 E Patrick and readying it to be the home of “Cowork Frederick”.

Cowork Frederick officially opened September 4, 2012 with 20 members. Our diverse community has grown to 60 people with a wide variety of professions, and experience levels, for-profits and not-for-profits, remote workers, freelancers, and micro-business owners from many different backgrounds, and with many interests.

Along the way, the Cowork Frederick community helped shape the workspace and to refine our sense of who we are and why we cowork together. There’s more to our origin story, but I’ll leave it there because the big news here is our expansion and, in many ways, our evolution, into our new building and a new version of ourselves.

In 2017, based on input from members of the Cowork Frederick community, plans began for an expansion in both square footage and function. We were on the hunt for a building with big, open spaces when 120 E Patrick, right next door to our original location, went on the market.

I confess I do a lot of things based on gut feel. This was one of them. Without fully knowing how we’d convert a former mansion of a home into the shared office space we needed, we bought it. After a lengthy planning and permitting process (slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic), work began. It took us a couple of years to arrive where were are today, but it was so worth it.

Today

Cowork Frederick members have been working in the new space for a couple of months now and we’re all getting nicely settled in. Today, as I write this, people are catching up over coffee and tea in our new communal kitchen. Others are hunkered down to knock out some work in our shared workspace. People are oohing and aahing over the latest local art feature – a landscape mural made of wood that was just hung last week. And, I just saw a Slack message from a member of our coworking community asking who wants to gather for a casual happy hour on Friday. This place – these people – make my heart happy.

From cozy work “nooks” to open seating, desks to comfy chairs and loveseats, standing or sitting, private and shared offices, social and quiet/focused spaces, phone booths, and meeting rooms, Cowork Frederick’s expansion created many work “experiences” to offer freelancers, micro-biz owners, and remote workers.

The big reveal

As you may have read in an earlier post, our expansion wasn’t just about getting more square feet. It was about creating spaces for the kind of experiences our members told us are important to them. So, here’s what our Grand (re)Opening will reveal:

More “flex-desk” seating (bring a laptop, have a seat, and get productive)
More private offices (including one available by the day)
More phone booths for private calls
More whiteboards (for brainstorming or working out a problem or plan)
New casual seating – indoors and out (work, relax, read, hang out, whatever)
New work nooks (for that extra bit of focus or some collaboration)
New communal kitchen (for meal prep, gathering, and eating)
New dedicated meeting rooms (now available 7 days a week)
New micro-apartments (for digital nomads looking for a place to stay and work)
And so much more (local art, plants, coffee bar, tons of natural light)

I’LL BE THERE!

Purposeful design

So much has been said about the workspace, it’s important to note that, while we put an insane amount of effort into the design and renovation, it was never really about the building. The reason we have things like an awesome kitchen and work nooks is to foster the kinds of experiences our members told us they wanted.

We periodically poll members to get feedback on what’s going well and what could be improved – in our daily operations, how we use the space, events … just about everything. The central theme of that feedback over the ten years since we launched Cowork Frederick has always been “connection”. So, when we asked what members of our coworking community wanted in a new space they told us:

Places to gather and eat meals together
Outdoor spaces hang out and recreate
Casual seating set up for conversations
More spots to sit at desks in shared office areas
Random games and activities they can participate in at will

Even before the pandemic, people were becoming more aware of the need for healthier work environments and habits. Along those lines, members asked us for: