Coworking + Connections in Western Colorado

Originally published in the Summer 2020 issue of SPOKE+BLOSSOM

Photo Courtesy of Proximity

Lois Mueller was working from home, and it wasn’t working.

“At the time, I was living with someone and we both worked from home. It was so bizarre to be in the same place at the same time, but not talking to one another,” she explains. “It didn’t feel healthy or right.”

So, Mueller starting looking for office space in Avon.

Unsurprisingly, office space in the Vail Valley comes at a hefty premium, if you can even find it.

When Mueller began looking, everything she saw was wildly expensive and much too big for her needs. Eventually, she found a landlord who agreed to charge her by the square foot for a corner of a large space. Soon, Mueller had friends wanting similar arrangements.

So, she approached her landlord with a big idea: remodeling the entire space — 2,400 square feet — and subletting offices to businesspeople looking to get out of their kitchens and spare bedrooms and into a professional environment.

Soon, Mueller was operating a coworking space with seven semi-private offices, a conference room, a lounge/hangout room and a kitchen.

This was in 2017, and her coworking space in Avon was called The Collective.

One of Mueller’s tenants was Christina Scalera, an attorney who runs an online digital- product company called The Contract Shop.

When Scalera relocated to Summit County from Atlanta in 2015, she tried working from home but found it disorienting and chaotic.

And while Scalera found several coworking spaces in Summit County, she was looking for something specific — an office with a door.

And that’s how she found The Collective.

“Lois offered me a very small room, just six feet by five feet with a desk, shelves and a door,” Scalera explains. “It was perfect.”

About a year later Scalera moved into a new coworking space in Vail, also operated by Mueller and known as The Collective | Vail.

NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A “COMMUTE”

Commuting gets a bad rap, associated with idling traffic and adverse environmental impacts. Yet, Scalera believes that there is nothing better for getting into work mode than physically leaving one’s home and moving to the office.

This doesn’t mean a commute has to be long, or even in a car. In many of Colorado’s small mountain towns and Western Slope communities, a commute can be on foot or by bicycle. But it does mean getting up, getting dressed and getting out the door.

It also means trading the distractions of home, for example, a never-ending pile of laundry or an attention-demanding dog, for a professional work environment.

And it’s a personal quest for an office of one’s own that draws entrepreneurs to coworking, not just as tenants, but like Mueller, as landlords.

Their stories are often similar.

Bruce Eckel lives in Crested Butte and writes books about computer programming languages. He also travels a lot.

After years of visiting coworking spaces in Europe, he opened Evolve in Crested Butte in 2018.

“My goal was to create something self- managing,” he explains, adding that he still works from home, but drops in to work at Evolve.

Kayce Anderson, the founder and director of For the Good, an educational nonprofit for girls in rural Africa, created The Coop in Glenwood Springs after a futile search for appropriate office space.

“Most of the offices in Glenwood are really expensive or dark and old,” she shares. “While I could find the equivalent of a closet for not much money, it wasn’t a good work environment.”

Unlike The Collective coworking spaces in neighboring Eagle County, The Coop features a large space for drop-in users and doesn’t have private offices.

While attracting coworkers has been easy, the biggest challenge for Anderson has come from having to learn what she calls “a surprising amount of technology.”

Photo Courtesy of JXN Station

THE RISE OF PROXIMITY

It’s this dependence on technology that has allowed Proximity, a Western Slope firm, to become a worldwide force.

Proximity opened early coworking locations on the Western Slope, beginning with Proximity Space Montrose, Factory in Grand Junction and Proximity Space Ridgway.

As they got into the business, the founders realized that automation would be a huge benefit.

Looking for solutions, they discovered what Proximity’s chief operating officer, Allison Blevins, describes as “digital duct tape.”

“We could find everything we needed, but it was all separate software,” she explains.

So, Proximity’s founders, including several software developers, created an integrated hardware and software platform. The functions included on Proximity’s web- and native device-based application include billing and payment, reservation management, member, company and job directories, a digital concierge and electronic door access.

Soon other coworking spaces heard about Proximity’s platform and wanted to use it. The result is a network of more than 650 coworking spaces in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Europe.

“Our members are connected through the software,” explains Blevins. “Many spaces offer guest passes that allow access to other Proximity spaces.”

“It’s really cool that the connected network connects people even further afield,” she adds.

As for Factory, it recently relocated to the Maverick Innovation Center on the Colorado Mesa University campus. According to Tom Benton, the Innovation Center director, this move creates additional networks, as Factory coworkers interact with student entrepreneurs.

COLLEAGUES, FRIENDS AND CONNECTIONS

Deb Hogstad runs JXN Station, a 16-office coworking space in Grand Junction that is part of the Proximity network. Hogstad and her family opened JXN Station to provide an office for their company, Mountain View Window and Door, and they made a conscious effort to draw in others from the construction industry.

While there are notable exceptions (for example, a New York-based opera singer who officed at JXN Station for several months last summer), Hogstad believes that the emphasis on complementary businesses has paid off.

“While our tenants are not totally in construction, we have created a very strong networking group,” she explains.

Ultimately, the connections people forge while working together — sharing a laugh in a communal kitchen or a friendly wave goodbye at the end of the day — is what draws people to coworking.

“It’s a connection thing,” sums up Eckel. “Coworking is all about the connection.”

Photo Courtesy of JXN Station