A place to call their own

As consultants working sans office, mostly from Starbucks and Paneras, Joseph Warren, Jason Stoll and Heather Young Kendall knew there had to be a better place to conduct business than in a distracting, noisy cafe, but they didn't want the contract or expense of an executive suite.

So the trio started a venture in what has become a burgeoning trend nationwide: co-working space.

Situated on the 12th floor of the Wells Fargo building in downtown St. Petersburg, their company, CoCreativ, offers 5,500 square feet of the most modern digs in drop-in office space. For a membership fee of $10 per hour, $20 per day, or $150 per month, CoCreativ welcomes workers who find themselves in need of a desk, WiFi, meeting rooms or just other people with whom to share ideas.

Although the drop-in work space is not entirely unique, Warren, CoCreativ's CEO and chief evangelist, says the goal is to develop a scalable concept that can be franchised in the future. Warren says when his team examined the co-working space in other markets, it saw local companies meeting a local need, but not always profitably. “Instead, we wanted to look at the bigger problem and think more universally,” Warren says. That means the team started with a model that could work with 1,000 locations, then reverse engineered it to create its first.

It also aimed to create a fun yet professional environment where mobile workers can collaborate, similar to Naples' co-working concept, Venture X.

The challenges are numerous , Warren admits, but the firm already has a potential solution for its first dilemma: visibility. The views are gorgeous from the 12th floor, but capturing walk-in traffic can be a problem. The company is in talks to secure space on the ground floor of the Bank of America building in St. Pete, where it could establish a permanent presence within the next few months.