Why did NWC close its coworking space, and what’s next? A retrospective.

We closed our coworking space just over a year ago, but people are still asking about why we did.

1. Peter (my partner) and I just didn’t want to keep running a space anymore. We’d been in the business 7+ years and had never managed to turn it into something that was really supporting us more than just getting by, and we weren’t up for committing to 5+ more years of trying to figure out how to change that.
2. The lease was being increased from $9,400/mo to $25,000/mo (seriously), so renewing would have required us making drastic changes to the business model.
3. I felt that if I were to commit my energy to something, it should be to supporting the growth of the whole movement. I felt that working on rebuilding my own space would have taken me away from being able to work with the thousands of other spaces around the world that needed help.

Given all of that, my focus now has turned to consulting and developing products and services to help coworking space owners succeed.

Much of what you’ll find on this site is driven from a desire to help fellow coworking space owners build more sustainable communities, building off of what we learned through both our successes and our failures.

I’ve found some success with that, and now have a growing network of about 20 spaces I’m working with. I’m hoping to honor the memory of the special place we created by helping others to build similar things everywhere. So far, it looks like we’re making progress towards that.

If you’re reading this and you’re interested in building an awesome community of creative independents in NYC, get in touch.

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