When I first started working at home, I missed the chit-chat in the hallways and lunch with colleagues in the cafeteria. I'm an extrovert. All that time at home by myself made me a little insane. My freelancer friends in New York City and Boston told me that they rented out desks in writers' offices. They said it helped keep them focused, and they met interesting people, while eating their lunches in the break room.
I spent a few days trying to find a space like that here in the wilds of suburbia. There was nothing. There are a lot of freelance writers and other entrepreneurs out here. They camp out in the Barnes and Noble cafe and in Starbucks. So, I know they exist, but they haven't set up a writers' office.
I played around with the idea of opening up my own freelance office. I picked out the building that I would rent out. I imagined how much I would charge patrons and how it would be the coolest office ever.
But then abandoned the idea. I didn't think it would fly out here for the same reasons that the restaurants suck out here. Even though we're just 30 minutes from downtown Manhattan, suburbia is suburbia and tastes change once you cross the bridge. People have enough room in their homes for office space and nobody would be willing to pay money for space, when there's plenty of free space in the library and the coffee house.
Still, I'm very envious of people who work in these places.
Apt. 11d 
I thought that article was great, and I think that there is a real future for such spaces (especially with the tidbits about business connections that were enhanced through the spaces).
In our area, a group of moms at a private school rented a house to share as such a space, and then also used it for school related activities (i.e. a school club). But, they probably weren’t licensed up to make it a business.
Did you actually do the math on your fantasy office? on what you’d have to charge people to make it a worthwhile enterprise? True, suburbians won’t pay much, but it might also be true that the idea could be implemented at relatively low cost.
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I started doing the math, and then I interviewed friends who were similar to the potential customers and none of them would spend money on office space. A lot of them liked working at home and didn’t want to cart their files and books back and forth between from home to an office space. I also feared that I would spend all my time doing landlord stuff, and not enough time actually writing.
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Good point about it taking away from your writing. BUT if it works, it can be a nice sideline financially.
Here’s Makeshift Society in San Francisco. Rena Tom and Victoria Smith started it. Cool idea but I don’t know if it’d work in the ‘burbs.
http://makeshiftsociety.com/
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