When Wes Garnett, Pedro Moore and Steve Roettger started The coIN Loft nearly a decade ago, it was the first workspace of its kind in Delaware.
“No one [in Delaware] has even heard of coworking,” said Garnett, in a 2010 Technical.ly article. After a rocky start, coIN (short for “community innovation”) established itself on 9th Street in Wilmington. Although some think it no longer exists, coIN Loft survives to this day under its current name, Start It Up Delaware, located at 605 N. Market.
Today, coworking is big business, complete with global mega-chains like WeWork that exist outside of the Delaware bubble like Starbucks did, until just three years ago.
The number of non-traditional office spaces has grown, especially in New Castle County. (Sussex is currently without a coworking space – that we know of – since the demise of the short-lived Beach Desks in Rehoboth in 2016.
For this roundup, we’re including three several types of spaces: The communal coworking space, mini offices, incubators, and a couple that don’t fit neatly into any category, but are not traditional office spaces:
The Mill
Launched by Robert Hererra with the Buccini Pollin Group in 2016, The Mill has become a downtown fixture, located on the 4th floor of the Nemours Building. Members include Zip Code Wilmington, TrafficCast and The Tapp Network, and, as a bonus, it has use of Theatre N on the second floor. The Mill will launch its second location, The Mill Concord, in April 2019. The Wilmington North location will have two floors, including one devoted to private offices of various sizes. Also, major perk: free parking.
1313 Innovation
Located within The Hercules Building at 1313 Market Street in Wilmington, where two-story waterfalls and indoor plant life once filled the atrium, 1313 Innovation is less about excess and more about startup incubation. Founded in 2013 by Paul McConnell of McConnell Johnson Real Estate, the space is home to several University of Delaware Horn Program alums, including Carvertise, AndAgain and GeoSwap, and is the home base of the Dual School program.
The Hub @ 1201
1201 N Orange Street, also known as One Commerce Center, is a multi-use building housing traditional offices (including IncNow), virtual office services, residences, and The Hub, Stat International’s coworking space. Unlike The Mill, with its free beer and startup culture, The Hub’s demographic is companies and sole proprietors looking for small private offices.
Regus
Delaware doesn’t have WeWork, but we do have Regus – a multinational company offering pay-as-you-go “hot desking” and long-term desk leasing at the Brandywine Building in downtown Wilmington and Christiana Corporate Center in suburban Newark.
Emerging Enterprise Center
The New Castle County Chamber of Commerce offers small business incubators, including low cost startup office space, mentorships, seminars and other amenities. Located on the Riverfront at 920 Justison Street, the EEC has several different packages, depending on how much acceleration you need.
Kent County Emerging Enterprise Development Center
Also known as KCEEDC (say that ten times fast), this incubator and coworking space is located with the Kent County Levy Court building in Dover – and is one of the few spaces of its kind below the canal.
Middletown Business Incubator
Also located below the canal, but still in New Castle County, is the Middletown Business Incubator & Collaborative Workspace, or MBI, launched in 2015 with support from the Middletown Area Chamber of Commerce (MACC) Foundation. Located on North Cass near Main Street, the incubator accommodates up to 15 small businesses.
Delaware Innovation Space
Founded by the University of Delaware and DuPont with support from the State of Delaware, Delaware Innovation Space is a collaborative lab space that give biotech entrepreneurs access to top facilities and peer scientists. In 2017, Nemours Hospital for Children moved its Biomedical Research to the location at DuPont’s well-known Experimental Station campus.
Delaware Technology Park
Launched in October 2016, Delaware Technology Park, known as DTP, is a wet lab incubator located on the 272-acre site of the old Chrysler assembly plant in Newark now known as University of Delaware’s Science Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) Campus. Residents include the Green Line Business Group, mTrigger and AcroBiosystems.
University Office Plaza
Just off of I-95 in Newark you’ll find an unassuming office park with flex leasing plan for growing companies.
Delaware BioDome
Think of BioDome on the Astra Zeneca campus on Route 202 as DelawareBio’s collaborative space for meetings, seminars and networking. It’s not a space to keep a desk, so much as an alternative to Brew Ha Ha for meeting clients and giving presentations.
NextFab
The Philly-based makerspace opened its Wilmington location in the Creative District in 2017. Members can take classes and have access to a high-tech wood shop, 3D printers, laser cutters and a robotics lab to create product prototypes and do creative work.
RH Gallery
While an art gallery may seem out of place among the tech incubators and wet labs, the Hockessin-based RH Gallery is also a coworking space for artist entrepreneurs to create and built businesses in the art world.
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Did we miss anyone? Let us know about coworking hubs and other non-traditional work spaces here.
This editorial article is a part of Technical.ly's Office Trends month.
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