No longer a coworking space, Affinity Lab remains a community

Affinity Lab, the coworking space that billed itself as the first in the country, was suddenly evicted late last year, less than two weeks after a buyout that might have kept it afloat.

Now, a core team of the Affinity Lab community has decided to stick together — and though they no longer have access to the legacy U Street space, they still have each other.
Labber Ben Cohen, the editor of The Daily Banter, said in an email that 16 of the former members of Affinity Lab had moved together into a space at WeWork Wonder Bready Factory. They’re calling it Lab 2.0.

We’re all getting used to the new space and the set up at WeWork, so it’s taking a little time to adjust. The Lab is the oldest coworking community in DC (and quite possibly, America) so we’re happy to give it another chance to grow. We just had our happy hour again and had a pretty good turn out. Not bad given 6 weeks ago it had collapsed completely.

Companies installed in the Lab 2.0 include Dedicated, Mentor Capital Network, 2 Seeds, 82 Degrees and the Paxton Law Firm.
Catherine Miller, a community manager at WeWork, described the new setup in an email:

When we heard what happened with Affinity Lab shutting down unexpectedly, we thought it would be a great opportunity for people who were already familiar with the concept of coworking to join a similar community here at WeWork Wonder Bread. We had one large office open, so we worked to split it up into individual desk spaces for former Affinity Lab members and other businesses – we have a pretty high demand for dedicated desks, and our area was full, so this was a great solution on many fronts!