Company Culture

Rehoboth coworking space Beach Desks calls it quits

Cofounder Phil Hagen said he couldn't wrangle enough support.

Beach Desks cofounder Phil Hagen at the space in 2014. (Courtesy photo)

It’s hard to say it had a good run, because Beach Desks only opened in July 2014.
But the Rehoboth Beach coworking space has closed its doors, cofounder Phil Hagen told Technical.ly Delaware.
“It’s really a bummer all around,” he said.
The main reason for closing, Hagen said, was purely financial. He and fellow cofounder Micah Sklut were not using the space much because their own work demands had changed, and they couldn’t get enough members to join and contribute to lease payments. At the end of 2015, an interior designer was at Beach Desks for some office space, he said.
“We had some really good interest right at the end,” Hagen said. “We had two people email us after we terminated the lease.”
But the interest was too late. Hagen said he and Sklut took too much of a Field of Dreams, “build it and they will come” approach, and that the next time they try to open a coworking space, perhaps in a couple of years, they’ll more actively market and recruit for members.
Hagen said, though, that he is encouraged by the growth of Sussex County’s tech community — new meetups have sprung up of late — and that while now the time isn’t right, a coworking space at the beach could someday be successful.
“We’ll have a little more concerted plan for it in the future,” he said.

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