From the outside, Echo looks like any other house in the Westcott neighborhood. But inside, funky music plays as people move around the space, working diligently and socializing.

Echo is a coworking space — one of the few in Syracuse and the only one in the Westcott neighborhood. Syracuse’s coworking industry, however, has begun to grow in recent years. Since 2012, multiple spaces have opened in the city. 

In a coworking space, people work independently in a shared, sometimes temporary office. In 2018, an estimated 991 coworking spaces opened in the U.S., according to Coworking Resources.

Echo began as a design collective and later opened its office to coworking, said Damian Vallelonga, marketing consultant and graphic designer. The space moved to Westcott from North Salina Street in 2017. The space’s first location was meant for more artists and creatives.  Its new location serves those who work from home near the neighborhood, he said. 

“It’s open to people that want to get out of the house and be among like-minded professionals who are looking for a productive space but also a lightly social space,” Vallelonga said. “That’s the mix that we’re trying to make.” 

One of the first coworking companies in the city was Syracuse CoWorks, a nonprofit that started in 2012. Syracuse CoWorks has moved spaces three times since then, most recently to South Clinton Street on Oct. 1. Dallas Bryson, a mischief manager at Syracuse CoWorks, said the space was created “by coworkers, for coworkers.” 

“It was started by a group of small business owners in Syracuse who needed that resource because the city didn’t have it,” Bryson said. 

Most coworking spaces have their own niche and serve different communities, Bryson said. Until recent years, Syracuse CoWorks was the only coworking space in the city. This made it difficult for the space to cater to every member’s needs, she said. 

Adam Neumann, the former CEO of WeWork, a major coworking company, recently delayed taking the company public after a lack of interest by investors, according to The New York Times. WeWork coworking spaces are in 125 cities worldwide. 

Bryson said that WeWork’s recent upset shows that coworking businesses should be tailored to communities. They should not be “mass produced.” 

“Every community is going to be different, and I think ideally, coworking spaces are small and unique by nature so that they can serve different communities,” Bryson said.

At Echo, some members are creatives, but they all work in different fields, Vallelonga said. One member is an environmental researcher, and one is an architecture professor at Syracuse University. Another member is a guitar teacher who holds lessons in a private room within the space. 

Alec Sessa, a space manager at ShareCuse, said coworking gives people increased opportunities to network. ShareCuse opened at the start of September on Harrison Street.

“If you sign up for a space with 60 members, you get to talk to 60 new people that you didn’t know before,” Sessa said. “You can make money and do business with people that you just met.” 

Technology is the most common industry in coworking spaces, Sessa said. MedTech, a trade association of pharmaceutical, biotech and medical technology companies, is an “anchor” client of ShareCuse, he said. 

Even though Syracuse is a smaller city, coworking was bound to grow, Vallelonga said. The city had a population of 143,396 in 2017, according to census data. Coworking spaces can thrive in small cities because they are more accessible for small business owners than they would be in larger cities, he said. 

“Coworking in general has become a standard offering in every city,” Vallelonga said. “It’d be odd to find a city that didn’t have it.” 

Published on October 8, 2019 at 9:08 pm

Contact Natalie: nrrubiol@syr.edu