A new coworking space has opened in Tilton, making it one of the few located north of Concord as the industry continues to evolve.
International Workplace Group, a Luxembourg-based firm that is expanding in the U.S., recently opened coworking spaces on Elm Street in Manchester and Riverfront Place on W. Main Street in Tilton under the Regus brand. They join more than a dozen other coworking offices around the state, most of which are located in Hillsborough and Rockingham counties.
“As an important suburb of Concord, a flexible coworking space in the city of Tilton, located closer to where employees live, is the ideal solution for organizations and employees looking to embrace the best of both worlds: shorter commutes and increased opportunity for collaboration,” Mark Dixon, the group’s founder & CEO, wrote in response to a Monitor query.
Dixon said IWG is expanding to more than 5,000 locations in all 50 states.
Coworking businesses rent short- and medium-term office spaces, stand-alone desks, meeting spaces for groups and, depending on the site, relaxation areas or even workshop spaces.
The industry moved out of niche status after COVID-19 spurred the work-from-home movement. The industry has had ups and downs since then, most notably when the national company WeWork went bankrupt in 2023. It remains robust, even as some companies push employees to return to the office full-time.
“Demand is also becoming more predictable as hybrid models settle into stable patterns, enabling companies to use coworking for satellite offices, remote teams and project-based work,” is how the independent journalism site AllWork put it. It said that supply “continues to lag in secondary and tertiary markets” outside of metro areas.
Dixon argued that “it’s no longer a binary choice between working from home or commuting to a far-away office for employees; it’s increasingly about working from a much more convenient office, closer to home.”
He said his group’s research found that 83% of CEOs “enable teams to work from multiple locations, including local workspaces.”