CHICAGO—Just three months after opening a 15,000-square-foot co-working and conference center on the first floor of One South Wacker in Chicago, Serendipity Labs has gone forward with its plan to expand onto the tower's second floor where it has leased an additional 15,000-square-feet. More than 1,000 members signed up since last fall, and the new space, which opened last Friday, offers access to private offices, dedicated workstations and more co-working space.
But the expansion of this flagship site is just one step in a national expansion that company officials say will eventually bring Serendipity Labs to hundreds of locations in both CBDs and suburbs. John Arenas, Serendipity's chief executive officer, tells GlobeSt.com that the company has already signed development agreements with franchise partners for more than 50 locations. He expects to open about one dozen new sites in the next few months and perhaps two dozen by the end of 2015. And within three or four years, he hopes to have more than 200 locations.
“There are many one-off co-working locations,” he says, “but that's not what we are. We're building a national network.” One of Serendipity's top goals is to provide corporate real estate solutions to major companies that want to reduce long-term lease obligations but still need to access world-class office space in many locations. “We're a real estate vendor in that sense.”
“It's a hub-and-spoke approach,” he adds, with Serendipity operating the top CBD locations, which will occupy space in class A properties, and the franchise partners handling the rest. As reported in GlobeSt.com, the company will locate its sites in condo developments, office towers and even hotels.
“The franchises give us the opportunity to grow quickly,” Arenas says. Furthermore, this hub-and-spoke strategy “enables our members to have a network of offices within a metro region,” the importance of which has just been illustrated by the massive blizzards that swept the nation. “Avoiding a commute is a big draw of the suburban office.”
Many of the approximately 1,000 new members in Chicago work in the building. They use the first floor and the landlord subsidizes their memberships. “It's a hybrid approach,” Arenas explains. “The building delivers a world-class amenity but does not have to operate it.” And for Serendipity, the building's tenants provide a base and “have been the biggest source of leads for new members.”
Serendipity hired Hospitality Ventures Management Group, a hotel management and development firm that runs dozens of hotels across the country, to handle day-to-day operations. HVMG even provides a concierge. “We maintain the corporate standards that established companies need to operate,” Arenas says, so users “can expect a certain professional acumen that they may not have encountered in other co-working spaces.”
And those users are a cross-section of the working world. "Everyone is digital and connected now, not just millennials," Arenas adds. "Across all industries, company sizes and generational groups, mobile workers are increasingly choosing how and where they work."
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
