Office Space News
Cost-Conscious Coworking Facility Opens in Cambridge
Published May 14th, 2009 by Jennifer LeClaire
C3. No, it’s not a Bill Gates project. It’s a new coworking facility just outside of Boston. Cambridge Coworking Center, or C3, opened its doors earlier this month and is getting a warm welcome among Massachusetts’s entrepreneurs.
“Co-working is a growing movement amongst early stage entrepreneurs and independent professionals,” the company wrote in its announcement. “A nice definition we’ve seen is that co-working seeks to meld the shared-office concept, which C3 parent Cambridge CIC (Cambridge Innovation Center) has offered for the past 10 years, with café culture: informal social and collaborative interactions. This work-style is not right for everyone, but it is really terrific for some.”
A Low-Cost Coworking Center
With the launch of the Cambridge Co-working Center, CIC is experimenting in the hopes of finding another new and compelling way for people to work together. The company’s goal is to provide a fun, low-cost option for people to work outside their homes in a supportive community environment.
Sounds like the perfect workplace, doesn’t it? It gets better. The cost is only $250 a month per person. Believe me, that’s quite the bargain in the Boston region. The company kept the cost down by “tinkering” with some of the traditional aspects of the shared office space model.
“We knew, for instance, that supporting and maintaining phones and mail were two time-consuming and costly processes. So we decided to eliminate both of them,” the company said. “These days new entrepreneurs are competent to use Skype and services like Google Voice for phone service. Physical mail can be picked up across the street at the U.S. Post Office or at people’s homes if it is important, and it is decreasingly so. Wired Ethernet and switches are expensive to manage, so we left those out.”
A Laid Back Environment
That doesn’t mean you get a slow connection at C3. The company did spend the money to install a 10 mbps high-tech, enterprise quality WiFi network. If you work at C3, though, you might share more than communal space – you might also share a desk. C3 staff doesn’t think its clients will mind. They’ve noticed many people like to work at large tables and even sitting on couches, rather than small desks.
To that end, the space is configured primarily with large tables with many chairs around them, as well as with soft seating areas, much like a library reading room. There are two private conference rooms. Who gets to use them? The company said members will have to decide that amongst themselves.
“We installed speakers throughout the space and have filled it with music (at a modest volume) to help provide acoustic cover for conversations,” the company says. “We have added other aesthetic and practical amenities, such as unlimited coffee and spring water.”
If you are in the Cambridge area, stop by and check out what C3 is doing and let us know how it looks in real life (and what type of music they are playing inside).
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Elizabeth Sanchez May 14th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Sounds like a cool place. Good example of a shared office facility operator who is moving in a new direction. Sounds like this one is more open in terms of its layout than others, with fewer desks. I am not sure what the culture is like in Cambridge, though I imagine it’s fairly high-tech since it’s near MIT. Less artsy. It’s an interesting coworking set up.
Maggie Correta May 14th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
You got me on the C3 hook, LOL. I remember when there was all the speculation over Bill Gates starting a new company called C3. Wasn’t too long ago. It’s good to see yet another coworking facility spring up. It looks like coworking facilities are outpacing serviced office facility growth. I don’t have any data on that. But it looks like it if you do an Internet search.
Tim Rowe May 14th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Nice article. Thanks, Jennifer. In answer to Maggie’s question, I think shared office and co-working are really quite different. Coworking is much more about a shared working experience, where as ’shared office’ tends to be about operational efficiencies.
Rob Zeus May 15th, 2009 at 4:30 am
Very nice. I like the focus on cost-cutting at this coworking facility. If they hadn’t taken all those measures, the office space might have carried rent twice as much. I am not surprised at this level of innovation coming out of Cambridge, especially from the Cambridge Innovation Center, LOL.
Jennifer LeClaire May 15th, 2009 at 7:04 am
Tim - Thanks for chiming in on this. It’s important that we continue to define the various forms of alternative office space. Coworking seems like a simple concept, but even within that space there are creative ways to go about it. Shared offices and sharing offices are two different things. Thanks again, Tim!
Marcus Hester May 15th, 2009 at 7:44 am
I’d love to work in a coworking facility like this! Large open spaces, working on couches. This is great. I do wonder if serviced office spaces will begin to offer these communal spaces in some markets to accommodate a need for a blend of private offices and open spaces. It’s something worth considering. Are you listening, Regus?