West Allis has a new coworking space
Co-owner: Working from home is isolated, lonely
After two years of construction, a new coworking space has opened in West Allis.
“The concept or the idea is simply, ‘I want to get out of my house,’ or ‘I need a place to go work, but not necessarily full-time,’ ” said Matt Maurice, who coowns MKE CoWork with his business partner, Edward Riggenbach.
“What better way to split some of that cost than to use a shared office space?”
MKE CoWork, 7311 W. Greenfield Ave., has a “modern industrial vibe,” Maurice said, with exposed brick, liveedge wood, rustic wood flooring, and Herman Miller and Steelcase furniture.
What the space offers
All memberships include fiber internet, furniture use, coffee, and 24/7 access.
A membership for the building’s shared workspaces, with access to “phone booths” or “nooks” to step into for private phone calls, costs $200 per month.
The space has about 10 “dedicated desks,” separated from the building’s common areas. Each desk is rented out to one individual, so they can leave their things, from monitors to family photos, on it. That option costs $400 per month.
The space’s three private offices are each conducive to two or three people, and cost $1,000 per month.
Team rooms, which cost $1,600 per month, are designed for four or five people. The building has two.
There are also two conference rooms members can rent. One room fits six people, and the other fits eight. They’re separated by a garage door, so the rooms can be turned into one larger space.
“It’s 2020, we share our cars, we share our houses, why not share an office space?” Maurice said.
There’s a courtyard area outside with a garage space for small gatherings. This space will be available to nonmembers for the first few months, Maurice said.
Members use an app to access the building and their rented spaces.
All reservations can be made online at mkecowork.com. The website also features specials the business is running.
“We’re hoping to find a big market of people that are stuck working from home, and just don’t want to anymore,” Maurice said. “Zoom video calls with kids in the background or husbands and wives walking through your meeting, you don’t have to worry about that when you’re working from a coworking space.”
Members are expected to follow the mask mandate, and hand sanitizer has been placed throughout the building. After someone leaves a shared workspace, a staff member will clean the area.
How MKE CoWork came to be
When Maurice and took over the building in 2018, it had been vacant for about two years.
Initially, the space was going to have three studio apartments rented out as Airbnbs upstairs, and a business on the main level.
About two years ago, Maurice and Riggenbach merged their property management businesses to form Welcome Home Milwaukee.
“We needed a space like this,” Maurice said. “When you’re working from home, you’re super isolated and lonely. A lot of business happens talking to people, and you’re more productive in a space where there’s other people giving you energy, jiving, passing ideas, and finding out what other people did.”
To get the building where it needed to be, Maurice said it was basically taken down to its exterior bricks and rebuilt. “Everything was redone,” he said. MKE CoWork’s first day open was Aug. 17.