Co-working space is on a tear in Denver

DENVER – Purveyors of co-working and shared office space have a theory: traditional office real estate is dead. Flexible leasing arrangements, chic interior design and in-office hospitality services killed it. It might just take a while for the fluorescently-lit cubicle farm to die.

The Denver Post reports that the metro area is in the midst of a flexible work space explosion and the blast radius stretches from LoDo to the suburbs. Whether or not that rapid expansion in the market represents a revolution is debatable, to say the least.

“What is making nontraditional office (space) successful is it simply works,” said Jason Winkler, co-founder of local shared office giant Industry Denver. “It’s value-generating. You can be more productive and more creative. I am amazed people are looking at what I call old-school real estate at all.”

A recent CBRE Research sample of the Denver/Boulder commercial real estate market turned up 57 co-working leases totaling 1.3 million square feet of space. That’s a 62.5 percent increase over the 800,000 square feet of co-working space CBRE found in the area in December.

Denver economic development officials don’t see it as a fad or a product of a competitive commercial real estate market. They look at it more as a next step in the evolution of the workplace and believe it has taken root in the Mile High City in particular because of its entrepreneurial and cooperative business community.

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