Steve Thurston (2020)
Christy Alexander will move WorkSmart, her shared office space company, to the former First National Bank building at 237 Glen St. WorkSmart will be the anchor client in the building currently under renovation. The company is moving from 3 Warren St.
Alexander has been working with the building's owner, David Dammerman, to design the interior. As she designs the new space, she said she is thinking about how COVID-19 restrictions have forced people to rethink work and office space.
"For 20 years people said 'Work from home can't work,' and it took 20 hours to say 'It has to work,'" Alexander said in an interview.
Steve Thurston (2020)
At WorkSmart, entrepreneurs, freelance workers and others buy memberships, giving them access to the office space where they share desks, printers, wifi, whiteboards and other amenities. The current space has been adjusted for COVID restrictions.
Some members are work-from-home employees in the same company who meet at her location to work together. Others are gig workers or freelancers looking for a quiet place to work or for help or camaraderie from like-minded entrepreneurs.
After the Tuesday morning Warren County Economic Development Corporation meeting, Nov. 17, EDC President James Siplon told Alexander and Dammerman that people in the area whom he has spoken to are looking for "release space," a location where work-from-home employees can get out of the house. At the same time, they need some privacy to conduct distance-based meetings--such as Zoom calls--without whispering into the microphone.
Executives, he said, need a room outside the home to hold meetings.
"I don't know how enduring that is," Siplon said later, referring to business needs post-COVID.
In a separate inteview, Alexander said she agreed that it's impossible to know the future, but she believes changes in work habits are permanent.
"I'm certainly here to serve during the transition" into a post-COVID economy, she said, adding that she knows some people will return to their offices after working in her space, but not everyone will. "Work-from-home is here to stay."
She said the design of the new office "is 100% about being able to support people, being able to provide what they need." Perceiving those needs will be tough.
To that end, the plan for the building thus far is to remove drop-ceilings from the front of the building and expose the original ceiling, she said.
They will build offices in that atrium along the wall that the building shares with Crandall Library. Above those, they will likely create a second row, a mezzanine level, of offices. Much of the main floor will remain open, with desks and office amenities including a kitchen.
In the discussions with Alexander and Siplon on Tuesday, Dammerman, the building's owner, suggested that they may be small, private offices, COVID-clean, places where people can keep their belongings and lock the door behind them.
"That's the thing that'll be different...compared to her current space," he said.
Alexander said she was still considering just how many offices to create and how large each should be. She said that she wants space for all, from established companies to the newest, one-person start-up that has little extra money to spend.
She said she plans to move by the end of April when the lease on her current space runs out.