WATERVILLE, Maine — Co-working spaces — shared office facilities designed to accommodate a modern, tech-savvy workforce of independent contractors and telecommuters — are opening all over the world, but so far, their foray into Maine has been limited to Portland.
But Pat Roche thinks it doesn’t have to be that way. He founded Think Tank Portland, one of several co-working spaces in the city, in 2010. Since then, the organization has grown to include space in Yarmouth, and Roche has set his sights even further afield.
“I’ve seen what it’s done in Portland, and what’s happening around the world, about how co-working is emerging not only in metropolitan areas but in satellite cities,” he said during a meeting Monday with local businesspeople, college officials, property owners and civic leaders in Waterville.
“The downtown could use kind of a shot in the arm,” he said. “These spaces are the catalyst for that growth.”
Co-working spaces provide a workspace to individuals and companies in exchange for membership fees. Many include different levels of membership, ranging from the use of shared areas and WiFi to private, locked office space. Many co-working spaces cater to the tech industry and online startups.
There’s been interest in co-working spaces in the Elm City for several years, said Nate Rudy, executive director of Waterville Creates, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting Waterville as a city for the arts. Rudy first broached the idea in 2009, when he was a new resident of the city.
“The time wasn’t right then. I think it is right now,” Rudy said. “This would create a great opportunity for the hundreds of creative people who live here but aren’t downtown yet. … Downtown is where creatives want to be.”
Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, is a proponent of co-working spaces as a means of attracting — and developing — talent in Maine. The quality of life in the state is already such that people want to be here, he said. But they need places to work.
In the 21st century, that doesn’t necessarily mean a large employer such as a paper mill or manufacturing plant. Many talented people have jobs they can bring with them. They just need a space, and a community, to plug into.
“It’s about putting Maine on the map, so that young families, talented professionals, look at Maine as a place they can come to — not by chance, or because they went to some summer camp once, but because we’ve created a culture of entrepreneurship, so they can come be a big fish in Waterville that they couldn’t be” in larger cities, Alfond said.
The best way for that to happen is for the state to have some skin in the game, he said. He’s proposed a bill to create a $250,000 fund to award grants to groups that want to open co-working spaces in Maine’s downtowns. The fund would be administered by the Department of Community and Economic Development and offer matching grants of up to $25,000 to successful applicants.
The proposal was modelled after a similar — albeit much larger — program in Massachusetts. There, the TDI Cowork Collaborative has $2 million in available funds for co-working development in “gateway cities” throughout the commonwealth.
Alfond said his plan is the right size for Maine and would help the state attract the kind of creative workforce that “never wants to work in a cubicle.”
Liz Trice, founder of another Portland-based co-working space, Peloton Labs, said the move toward shared office space is accelerating because there are fewer and fewer workers who need to show up at an office every day.
“The number of people who can work remotely is increasing all the time,” she said. “It’s a very high percentage of the population that can work remotely — basically anyone who uses a computer for work can work remotely at least some of the time.”
Trice said she was happy to hear about legislative interest in supporting co-working. She said Peloton Labs’ focus on “incubation services” — from networking events for members to coaching sessions with lawyers, web developers, writers and others — demonstrate that co-working spaces can be used to foster entrepreneurial energy.
In the long run, that could mean more jobs.
Tracy O’Clair operates TOCMedia, a Waterville-based social media and email marketing firm. She said Monday that a c-oworking space in the city would be perfect for her small company, which has relatively few employees but works with a swarm of independent contractors.
O’Clair said she often works at cafes, but there are some business activities you just can’t do at Starbucks. A local co-working space would solve a lot of her problems.
“You can’t really do a conference call in a coffee shop,” she said.
Follow Mario Moretto on Twitter at @riocarmine.
Note: The Bangor Daily News is a member of Think Tank Portland.