Located along the waterfront of Liberty Station at 2869 Historic Decatur Rd., Moniker Commons offers memberships ranging from drop-in seating, reserved desks and private enclosed offices where individuals, start-ups, and small businesses can thrive in a collaborative environment. The space, custom designed, built and fabricated by Moniker's in-house design team, Moniker Design, features an open warehouse-style layout with three conference rooms, elevated huddle rooms, individual phone booths, custom kitchen, and stylish indoor and outdoor lounge areas.

The office's handcrafted showpieces include waterfall-edge communal tables fashioned with repurposed 1930s wood and steel, seven-person work stations with blackened steel patina partitions and sliding conference room doors constructed with reclaimed redwood panels. Additional highlights include concrete floors, contemporary lighting, shiplap detail, nature-inspired wall graphics, living greenery and mural art by locally based Brave Aesthetics.

Beyond the standard office amenities, the creative workspace features a high-design kitchen stocked with Moniker Coffee cold brew and rotating craft beer, concierge service, lactation lounge for working mothers, and outdoor patio yard games. Taking advantage of the waterfront location, paddleboards and bikes are available for mid-work break sessions.

We spoke with Cadieux about what makes Moniker Commons unique and how community is the driver for this type of space.

GlobeSt.com: What makes Moniker Commons unique?

Cadieux: Our whole company is built on this idea that people are the biggest priority in anything we do. I have a real estate background, and opening Moniker Commons is the same concept as a retail store. Hospitality is the number-one value proposition to give people a good experience. The biggest trend in any kind of office development revolves around the idea of holistic service opportunity. We talk about the second shift a lot: after work, you go to pick up your groceries and dry cleaning, go to the gym—all these things you're thinking about in your personal life. To create more productivity, we though, “How can we take care of those things for you and do it quickly?” Moniker Commons is in Liberty Station, a public market near Vons, Trader Joe's, a dry cleaner, a massage place—all the things you would want within walking distance. We're developing a concierge program for a fee. It's more efficient and gives people back time, which is the most valuable asset we all have. We give you your time back so you can be with your family or get done what you want to do quicker.

GlobeSt.com: How do concepts like this one differ from larger office campuses and stand-alone creative-office buildings?

Cadieux: I haven't created something that others can't put in. The idea of how you serve people is a higher level of service than the traditional office owner is used to delivering in order to get rent. The opportunities for a stand-alone building or a larger office campuses are there, but a mixed-use environment has the best advantage because you have the opportunity to give people a chance to connect with all these different things. More developers will look for ways to do this; it can be a cash-flow-neutral amenity. It fits into larger campuses, but it's harder to deliver in suburban campuses that are an island without amenities nearby. Parking nearby helps. In San Diego, people prefer surface-level parking, so it's nice we can offer that to our members.

GlobeSt.com: Tell us about how community is the driver for this type of space?

Cadieux: Community is really one of the best ways to serve and create hospitality. We deeply believe as a company that people were built for community: sports, hobbies, spiritual things with churches. We really want Moniker Commons to be a community. We found in research that community is one of the top reasons number one-reasons why people want to be in co-working space. Sole proprietors who work from home don't like to be alone all day. A lot of Millennials love to work all day in a coffee shop; they like the buzz, the energy and being around people. We are in partnership with a gym, and we offer boot-camp classes where we'll sell a group on membership. It's a mutually beneficial relationship, and during the off months, speakers come in and talk about personal growth, strength and how to achieve a better version of yourself. If you're not personally healthy, you won't be professionally successful. We try to figure out how to create spaces for people to meet people they don't know, to give them an opportunity to hang out.

GlobeSt.com: Why is San Diego the ideal market for this type of space?

Cadieux: Two things: one, San Diego is referenced as an 18-hour city. There's something unique about 18-hour cities, and we only want to focus our expansion in those cities. In 24-hour cities, there's less of a value or desire for community; in general, people are more focused on career and pushing that really hard. In 18-hour cities, the people have a more laid-back mentality; it's not the cliché of the old guy in sandals working a couple hours a day, but people really hustling to try to make an impact on the world and not just making money. The entrepreneurial, creative community in San Diego is just burgeoning.

GlobeSt.com: What else should our readers know about Moniker Commons?

Cadieux: Moniker Commons was a big part of getting CreativeMornings going. This is a national thing, where you put out a topic and everyone meets up for free to talk about the same topic. Those types of things are encouraging to us. We want to continue to build an entrepreneurial foundation of businesses so that, if you should grow out of this space, we will celebrate and help you find a bigger office. The biggest group in our co-working space has 13 members, so we want people to grow and expand. We love that we get to participate in that and in giving people private offices. We have a low security deposit, and we want to make it where you have the ability to be set for six months; you can stay longer, but we're excited to play in that middle ground.

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