Mar 7

Mar 7 Co-Working Together

I live in North Hyde Park, Vermont, one of those small rural villages that you can easily miss if you blink while speeding along the state highway. We’re just a cluster of about two dozen farm houses, a small post office, two tiny churches (one abandoned), and a few small manufacturing businesses that evolved from the neighborhood’s former heyday as a timber industry hub. Heck, we used to be home to the world's largest golf tee manufacturer in the mid-1900s.

But like many rural Vermont communities, it’s been several decades since our neighborhood was thriving economically as business interests have moved elsewhere. Nevertheless, this sleepy village was a good fit for my family since the cluster of homes also has access to one of today’s more precious resources: broadband internet. We work from home, telecommuting and collaborating with people several states away. Most days I never even change out of my slippers, and while I do wear pants, I kind of don’t have to.

After moving here, I found I had two neighbors who, like me, work remotely from their homes. We do it for our own reasons. For me it’s to be close to my toddler and not miss her childhood. For my neighbor Lindsay she enjoys the lower cost of living so her freelance work doesn’t have to be overly demanding. Another friend does it so she and her family can have nine acres for cows and chickens and the flexibility to homeschool their kids.

Yet we populate a town that no longer has a center, just a bunch of utility poles delivering internet access. Some days the isolation is the key to doing focused, productive work. And then there’s days where it’s just, well, lonely.

A time may come when our kids are grown or other circumstances change and I’ll be ready again for the company of others in an office setting. How might I access that without abandoning the beautiful mountain valley I call home?

Recognizing the exodus of people, especially younger Vermonters, from rural communities, a 2017 economic development bill S.94 aimed to enhance opportunities for remote work and workplace flexibility so people who want to live in any nook or cranny of Vermont—or at least those with broadband internet access—could do so while telecommuting to jobs in other locations. Legislators liked how the bill addressed economic concerns as well as environmental ones -- 43% of the state’s carbon emissions are related to transportation, and many people must drive over an hour each way to far-flung jobs. Often in the blinding snow.

The bill led to the Remote Worker Grant Program which launched in 2018. The grant offered a $10,000 incentive to remote workers who relocate to Vermont to be full-time residents. As of September 2019, the grant had been awarded to 84 new Vermont remote workers. Grantees brought with them an additional 134 family members (including 44 children), for a total of 218 new Vermonters. (Alas, the grant recently ran its course and awarded all of the funds allocated to it. And no, I didn’t get to avail myself of the grant since we moved here in 2017, but thanks for asking).

As more remote workers migrate to the Green Mountains, and as job opportunities within the state flex to include telecommuting and the digital gig economy, a new industry is starting to bloom in Vermont: co-working spaces.

VT Digger recently covered the evolution of co-working communities across Vermont, reporting that there are now at least 30 such facilities across the state. Some are fairly basic shared office space rentals with desks, wi-fi and coffee, while others are designed as community centers with a calendar of activities and dedicated maker spaces for work that goes beyond laptop computers.

I’ve been following the growth of The Space on Main, a co-working space in Bradford that was born out of the town’s need for a village center after the last of the neighborhood’s Main Street businesses shuttered. It bills itself as a nonprofit community-based co-working, maker, conference, event, and gallery space and is housed in the former Hill’s 5 & 10 department store. The space’s founder, Monique Priestley, runs it as a passion project for her hometown while making her living working remotely for a tech company in Seattle. Her story made me think I could help turn the unused former Grange Hall in my village into a community center, and indeed the seeds of that effort are starting to sprout.

Some community work spaces like Spark in Greensboro have made skill sharing and tool sharing the core of their reason for being. In addition to workspace, Spark offers a 3D printer, professional printing services, computer access and frequent repair cafes and peer to peer business skill workshops.

DO NORTH in Lyndonville, Valley.Works in Waitsfield, and Bethel Works @ the Arnold Block in Bethel are more rural co-working spaces that opened in recent years. Each has a similar mission to provide affordable workspace and a sense of community by bringing creative professionals and entrepreneurs together under one roof. The Arnold Block also offers community event space, a commercial kitchen and dance and fitness classes. These kinds of projects have the potential to inject much needed life into Vermont neighborhoods whose prosperity has faded with the decline of farming, mining and manufacturing jobs over the past generation.

Ever since reading her groundbreaking book The Life and Death of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs has been a sort of prophet for me. In simple logic she explains what makes for a thriving city ecosystem; diversity of use being chief among the factors.

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” ― Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Even on the smaller scale of Vermont’s rural communities, this should hold true. What would bring me to work at a co-working space but the ability to walk about, to pick up lunch from a nearby cafe, to interact with other locals, to bounce ideas off of office mates, to pop into a general store before driving home. To feel like an integrated part of a community rather than a rider aboard some self-contained, office park spaceship. Or a hermit in my own home.

This is why another new co-working space caught my attention. The Stone Mill @ Work is part of a larger development that’s reimagined an old mill in the heart of Middlebury as a shopping, dining and lodging destination. It’s a clever co-mingling of attractions that tourists and locals alike can enjoy so the space should have a balance of traffic, neither too transient nor too stagnant.

These co-working communities have great potential to thrive where mega co-working chain WeWork is failing, because while the WeWork business model was a massive land-grab of office space that preys on the unstable gig economy, Vermont’s burgeoning co-working movement is building spaces that are thoughtfully integrated into communities and offer something created with and for the locals. Not merely desks and free coffee.

Vermont still has some work to do to bring broadband internet to all of its residents, and our population growth has been sluggish as we still lose a lot of residents to job opportunities in other states. But as economic and climate related threats drive certain people out of big cities, and the digital and creative economy finds new roots in rural areas, Vermont is emerging as a welcoming place for people seeking true community. Co-working spaces can be a magnet to help these people reimagine our small towns for a new era.

If you’re co-working curious, check out Think Vermont’s round up of all the co-working and maker spaces around the state and follow Coworkers of Vermont on Facebook for the latest news from area community and co-working spaces. There’s also Vermont Pass, an affiliation of co-working spaces -- including many mentioned in this story -- who allow members to drop in and work at other spaces in the network so workers have a desk wherever they go and communities forge new connections.