When businesses were shuttered during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Geoff Wood, founder of Gravitate Coworking, said coworking as a model felt endangered because people weren’t sharing spaces or socializing.

“I 100% was not sure that this was going to survive the initial pandemic because all the federal health policy that we were reading was saying to not do the things that we specialize in,” Wood said.

But business picked up in the following years as vaccines came out and hybrid and remote work became common for more people than ever.

In a recent interview with Wood, he reflected on 10 years in business, including how Gravitate is looking to expand its presence further into the Des Moines suburbs.

More suburban coworking spaces are popping up, in part because hybrid workers are interested in working close to where they live. Industrious, a coworking space provider with more than 160 locations worldwide, is now launching 70% of new locations outside of central business districts, up from 30% before the pandemic.

While Gravitate is looking to grow, Wood said he will be patient in finding the right spaces.

“We have a pretty specific formula that we think works for us, so we’re slow to jump on new locations,” he said.

Gravitate has one suburban location in Windsor Heights, along with its two in downtown Des Moines and its only space outside the metro area in Jefferson.

An excerpt of the interview with Wood is below. His responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

What is Gravitate looking for when scouting potential new locations?
We try to be above 10,000 square feet, which is pretty big for the state of Iowa marketwise. Nationally, it’s kind of small, but when we look at some of the other coworking spaces that have been successful around the state, they’re not 10,000 square feet. We know that that number works really well because we generate revenue based on space. It’s not a direct calculation — I think brokers and landlords always ask, “Well, how much can you pay?” It depends on what we can put in the space. It’s very different than the way most companies come in and say, “I need 50 chairs.” We need to be able to look at the design.

We’d like to be further out into the suburbs because I think in the downtown market, we’re really comfortable with our offerings here, the two locations, East Village and central business district downtown. Finding a space that’s 10,000 square feet in the suburbs is sometimes tricky just because we haven’t built out the office element of the suburbs, and a lot of the spaces that we’ve looked at that are that big have pretty high dollar amounts. One way to think of this is like office space as a service. We can’t necessarily put that big of a premium to get into some of these spaces out there. One of the things we’re always interested in is sublease opportunities and second-generation spaces. If somebody’s already done the hard work of putting in the bathrooms and walls, we’ll try to fit around that. That’s better for us than a blank box that we have to build everything from the ground just because that initial cost is a lot for us to absorb.

Is the interest in the suburbs in part driven by post-pandemic shifts in how people work?
Absolutely. We think our market will grow a lot based on people in the suburbs that want to kind of come to something local. If they’ve taken a remote job and don’t want to come downtown anymore, they’re probably not going to come downtown to Gravitate if they live in Ankeny or Waukee or farther out than that. So if we are in Ankeny and Waukee, I think that we have a lot of chance to bring those people in and provide them the hospitality and value that we bring. But it’s one of those things. Are you going to drive across town to go to a coffee shop if you’ve got one in your neighborhood? No, you’re more likely to go to that neighborhood one or just make coffee at home. We want to be that neighborhood coworking space for people.