COWORKING CONNECTION
Co-Fe helps Santa Fe embrace worldwide trend — the collaborative workspace
How fun is working remotely, really?
The coffee shop has plenty of people with invisible barriers up, isolation in a crowd.
You can work from home, but it (or the people and pets in it) distracts from the job at hand.
A happy medium is something called the coworking space.
The Co-Fe collaborative workspace in Santa Fe has followed an international phenomenon for the past 15 years of providing desks in open areas and tiny offices, a concept the world and countless U.S. cities have embraced.
Founder and manager Ted Harrison had no idea how the coworking idea would go over in Santa Fe when he committed to building Co-Fe into the former parochial school at 314 S. Guadalupe St., near the Shrine of our Lady of Guadalupe, that he leases from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. He need not have worried.
“All the desks and offices were under membership since we were under construction,” Harrison said.
He did wonder who might want a 42-square-foot office, but he said “they were the first to go.”
The 12 offices come with desk, chair, lamp and high-speed internet access and range from the cozy 42 square feet to 80 square feet, with two team offices at 150 and 200 square feet, renting from $425 to $930 per month.
Everyone has access to Co-Fe’s kitchenette, which Harrison stocks with Ohori’s Coffee Roasters coffee along with tea, fruit and trail mix.
Co-Fe has 15 dedicated desks at $295 a month that come with a locked cabinet and are assigned to the member. There also are 17 open spots at desks, the kitchen counter or soft seating, available for $195 per month or to $20 day-pass holders.
Harrison said he has between 50 and 60 paying members.
The coworking movement has revealed that people are social animals and, unlike the mind-your-ownbusiness dynamic of coffeehouses, such spaces lead to collaboration. Or, at least, communal chit chat. “The value of being seen is part of the hospitality aspect,” said Harrison, who explained that managing a coworking space is more akin to the hospitality industry than office management. “They feel they are cared about.”
Co-Fe has three conference rooms for members and three phone booths. The booths have no phones, but members working in the open areas can use them to avoid disrupting others.
Sociability, however, is one of the hallmarks of the coworking movement. The word “collaborative” is often used.
“Because there is little direct competition or internal politics, they don’t feel they have to put on a work persona to fit in,” the Harvard Business Review wrote in 2015. “Working amidst people doing different kinds of work can also make one’s own work identity stronger. … Coworkers reported that having a community to work in helps them create structures and discipline that motivates them.”
Emily Haozous, a research scientist for the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Calverton, Md., worked at home until seating herself at a Co-Fe dedicated desk in June. At home, the dining table was her office, with distractions from two cats, two children and her husband.
“I just needed a space,” Haozous said. “I was doing a lot of work in cafes. You can’t go to the bathroom without packing up all your stuff. It’s noisy. You never know if you are going to get a table or a plug. And there is no community.
“I feel there is accountability here,” she added. “If I don’t come in for a few days, I get a text [from another coworker]. Everybody is really focused here. It rubs off on me. This is my most conducive work environment.”
Kristi Silva has had a Co-Fe office since it opened in February. She had worked at home for the most part for 15 years, the last 1½ years as a senior research associate for the Center for Applied Research Solutions in Santa Rosa, Calif.
“My work efficiency just doubled [at Co-Fe],” Silva said. “This is just better. Most important is reliable internet. At home, the network just cuts out.”
Silva also acknowledged the social benefits of coworking.
“It’s a watering hole,” she said. “You can chat with people when you come in. It’s pretty remarkable, the people I meet have moved here from places like Austin and Nashville. I hope Co-Fe can be a draw for young people to come to our state.”
Co-Fe has full-time people, parttime people and one-time people.
“There is a nomad culture to the cowork world,” Harrison said. “People just drop in [on their travels]. Every week we have people on the road come for just a couple days.”
The coworking business model is generally credited to San Francisco software engineer Brad Neuberg, who set up tables in an open space for people to work at in 2005. There are now some 5,000 coworking spaces in the U.S. and more than 20,000 worldwide, according to various sources.
Santa Fe has a few other coworking opportunities at Regus, the CoLAB at Second Street Studios and the Santa
Fe Business Incubator.
Harrison stumbled on the concept in late 2016 while visiting his sister in Fort Collins, Colo. She was a coworking member as she got organized to open a charter school.
“I was intrigued by my sister’s experience,” he said. “You could see all these business and professionals coming together and working together. Given how powerful that experience was for my sister, I thought a similar workspace would be extremely valuable for independent workers and remote workers in Santa Fe.”
Harrison built Co-Fe into a larger vision he calls Common Ground that fills the 8,300-square-foot former school building. The 3,200-squarefoot coworking space fills seven rooms, and Common Ground also has an Iconik Coffee Roasters coffee shop and YogaSource studio.
“This building called to me,” Harrison said of the facility on Guadalupe that had sat empty for a few years. “It had all the right attributes. It was in the right area in downtown.”
And it has 44 free parking spaces in back, the most precious commodity of all, he said.
“This space has become a community center,” Harrison said. “This has become an active, enthusiastic part of town. There is a real sense of joy in a space that was a blank spot on Guadalupe.”