At home in the office
It’s early on a Monday morning and the entry to the newest Midtown office space, Wi+CoWork, is quiet.
The front room, which at one time was someone’s living room, is bright and cheerful. A green wall stands out from the white interior. Sunlight pours in through huge windows.
Teal, gray, orange and lime-green furniture seem unlikely companions in a single room, but somehow it all works.
The midcentury modern vibe makes the space feel more like a coffeehouse, even though the building is more than 100 years old.
Juan Maldonado and his cousin, Raul Caro, two of Wi+CoWork’s four founders, are busy making sure their members have what they need: Coffee is ready and everyone has the WiFi password.
Wi+CoWork, at 2502 La Branch, is their newest venture, and it’s one that’s on the front end of a changing workforce. They and Maldonado’s siblings, Diana and Diego, took a historic Midtown home and updated it top to bottom to appeal to solo-preneurs and entrepreneurs, many of whom are millennials wanting to leave their home offices in search of human interaction.
Juan Maldonado, a real estate broker and former teacher, said that when his group acquired the property, they had plenty of ideas.
“We were thinking of having maybe some tenants, attorneys and what not. Always, in the back of our heads, we thought about a coffee place. We are Colombians,” he said matter-of-factly.
Diego, the artist and philosopher of the family, brought focus.
“My brother said to me ‘shut up and listen to the property,’ ” Juan Maldonado said. “Through the process of design, Wi+CoWork was born, a fusion of a house, a coffee place and an office.”
They filled its three floors with contemporary design scavenged at flea markets, garage sales, antiques stores, Ikea and High Fashion Home.
There was plenty of “upcycling,” too, because when Maldonado suggested buying something, his brother often told him to make it instead.
That meant two old beams from the house were converted to hanging light fixtures. Small, colorful woven baskets from Colombia were mounted on a board for mailboxes.
The rooms are filled with tables to be used as group desks, many with dry-erase surfaces so users can write notes to themselves. Eames plastic chairs with dowel bases scoot underneath.
The kitchen provides a place for casual conversation. Its ubiquitous wood cabinets were painted pale green. Gray flooring provides a neutral base for the Lucite table and chairs. Artist Mario E. Figueroa Jr.’s graffiti — it reads “Free your mind” — keeps things lively.
Home’s history
David Bush, acting executive director of Preservation Houston, is grateful that the Maldo- nados have found a way to make the 109-year-old building relevant.
“It can be difficult to find imaginative, contemporary uses for historic properties, but it’s the only way they can survive,” Bush said. “Everything cannot and should not be a museum.”
His staff dug up what they could find on the site: The Queen Annestyle home with Colonial Revival detailing was built in 1907 by Isaac and Theresa Gerson, considered one of the city’s “pioneer” families.
Houston, at the turn of the 20th century, had just over 44,000 residents, and the downtown seemed a far distance from what was considered a fashionable South End neighbor- hood.
Isaac Gerson was a traveling salesman for a distilling company but shifted to bookkeeping when Prohibition put his employer out of business. Theresa Gerson was involved in many clubs and civic groups as she raised the couple’s son, Gustave, who became a physician.
The home was eventually turned into a duplex before becoming Wi+CoWork.
Changing workforce
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 2,500 people per month voluntarily leave their jobs. An increasing number of these are “solo-preneurs,” professionals who choose to start a business on their own — sometimes with no intention of ever adding staff.
The members at Wi+CoWork say that working for themselves is exactly what they want right now.
Shaniese Ruffin, a Realtor who launched her own business, Renter’s Warehouse, a year ago, opted to use co-work space at the suggestion of a friend. She’s a mom who needed to get work done without the pull of a child in the background. She wanted a place where she could sit among other adults, even if she’s completely focused on her own work.
Traditional office space was too corporate. “I looked around and I didn’t see anyone there. They were all in offices,” she said of available downtown office space.
She said Wi+CoWork is exactly what she wanted.
On this day, she’s at a table sharing space with Andrea Andrus, who launched her marketing company, Andrus Communications, a year ago.
“I have a designated office at my house, but there’s something about getting out sometimes,” she said. “It’s nice to be around like-minded individuals, entrepreneurs and solo-preneurs.”
That’s exactly what Maldonado had in mind as Wi+CoWork came together.
Membership here comes in three levels, based largely on access and the amount of space needed and costing $50 to $300 a month.
Wi+CoWork, which opened on Dec. 31, has 67 members. Maldonado describes them as people who don’t want to take on the day-to-day issues of maintaining a property or the permanence of a lease and self-employed people, like Ruffin and Andrus, who need to get work done someplace other than home.
“This is a place for dreamers — day dreamers. They say ‘I got fed up with the gas and oil industry and I am ready to start a consulting company,’ ” he said. “Everybody who comes in this door is here to make money; they are here to work.”