SATURDAY, JANUARY 29, 2011
Another day for the gorilla suit See Bob Higgins’ column on page 4
VOL. 2 NO. 256
PORTLAND, ME
PORTLAND’S DAILY NEWSPAPER
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Space: The co-working frontier San Francisco concept takes root in Portland BY MATT DODGE
Revolutionary Arab geeks See Roger Cohen’s column on page 5
What’s your iconic encounter? See Mark Curdo, page 7
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If opening a space for what has becoming “co-working” in Portland might seem a little redundant given the city’s wealth of coffeeshops and cozy home offices, then you’ve never tried to take a phone call over the whir of an espresso machine or edit photos with a cat “A lot of people traipsing across say they just your keyboard. “One of the main want to get out of the house advantages of coworking is having and have a a quite place to more profesmake phone calls,” said Elizabeth sional place Trice, standing to meet with outside Arabica clients.” — Coffee for a phone interview on a Elizabeth Trice, freezing Tuesday consultant afternoon. “The idea is to for real estate provide an office developer Peter space to people Bass, who who work from plans to open home or remotely and not just a the city’s first space, but the work purpose-built community that a lot of people don’t co-working have,” said Trice, a space consultant for real estate developer Peter Bass, who plans to open the city’s first purposebuilt co-working space by Bramhall Square by mid-February. Welcome to the world of the coworker, home to more than 1,000 Portland workers who use the spaces as an upgrade from home offices or working at home. For example, Peloton Labs will be a modern office space built on the foundation of the former Binga’s Wingas location destroyed in a 2008 fire. The “lab” will feature enough space to accommodate up to 40 workers, with work spaces from cubicles and desks to private offices and conference rooms and memberships ranging from $40 to $400 a month. “A lot of people say they just want to get out of the house and have a more professional place to meet with clients,” she said. The social and networking opportunities offered by such an arrangement are a perk of the space as well. “You have other people around who know see CO-WORKING page 9
A pedestrian passes the old Binga’s restaurant space, now Peloton Labs, a soon-to-open office space built on the co-working concept. (DAVID CARKHUFF PHOTO)