A former piano casing factory-turned-coworking space in Arlington is the newest location for Workbar as it expands into the suburbs.
Workbar is marketing the Massachusetts Avenue location, which opened last week, to professionals in the Arlington and Lexington area, CEO Bill Jacobson said.
“There’s people who either work from home or have a small business here and they want this kind of environment that’s not in a café and not in their home office,” he said. “We give them a variety of ways to do that.”
Workbar provides access to its shared spaces on a membership model, hosting coworking centers in downtown Boston, Cambridge and Somerville. Its roughly 1,300 members also can use coworking spaces in another 10 facilities that Workbar partners with from Providence to Lowell.
In Arlington, the 5,000-square-foot ground-floor space is broken up into four distinct work environments including a café, a commons room with high-top tables, a “switchboard” room optimized for making phone calls and a study for a more private work environment. Members can rent desks or private offices by the day or the month, with daily memberships starting at $30. Dedicated desk space rents for $400 to $600 a month.
The Mirak family, owners of a group of local auto dealerships, acquired the Old Schwamb Mill complex on Massachusetts Avenue in 1972 to provide additional storage for vehicles. The current buildings dating back to 1903 were the home of the Schwamb piano casing factory and later used to for production of mantles and church pews. By 1972, when the late John Mirak acquired the property, the complex’s days appeared numbered.
“People were saying, ‘Why don’t you knock these buildings down and have a big shopping center?’” said Robert Mirak, son of John Mirak and president of Mirak Properties. “He loved these old buildings. We preserved them and we’ve had a variety of tenants for years and years.”
Mirak Properties Vice President Julia Mirak reached out to Workbar after Jacobson spoke at an economic development panel sponsored by the town of Arlington, which has been seeking to attract tech office users.
The Workbar space was most recently occupied by SunBug Solar, which has relocated within the complex, and a group of artists and graphic designers.
Since the Arlington location opened last week, some of the Cambridge facility’s members have relocated to be closer to their homes, Jacobson said.
“A big attraction is you can have these resources that are within a five-minute circle of where you live, but also access to the locations downtown and come to them for events,” he said.
