One year and still no space for Coworking for Parents: ‘The search goes on,’ says founder

One of Aliza Schlabach’s parent coworking groups in Gryphon Cafe in Wayne.

It’s been one year since Aliza Schlabach announced plans to launch a coworking space for parents, but finding a spot that fits all the space’s needs has proven difficult, Schlabach said in a recent newsletter.

“So…,” Schlabach wrote,”*exhales with sadness* … unfortunately our latest space negotiations have fallen through,” referring to a potential spot in East Falls.

From the newsletter:

So far we’ve found 3 spaces that fit the bill, but they’ve all fallen through for a variety of reasons. One required us to put well over $150,000 into fit-out, which was above our budget as a startup. Another fell through because the building owner in the end decided they did not want our use (kids) in their property. On the third, the owner was unwilling to negotiate some major bullet points that would have left us in too risky of a position.

Schlabach’s struggle to find a space that fits her vision, which includes a space for parents to cowork, as well as a space for children to learn and play, could point to the fact that it can be hard to combine more than one community into a space.

Or, it could be that it’s simply a huge undertaking. When Schlabach announced her idea, it seemed so practical that it felt almost silly that a coworking space for parents didn’t exist yet. Maybe this is part of the reason why. This challenge, though, would make the space’s launch even more of a success.

Read the whole Coworking for Parents newsletter here. And subscribe to get updates on the space here.