Common designs and operates co-living buildings — furnished, extended-stay facilities made for three to five roommates — in eight U.S. cities, including New York, D.C., L.A., the Bay Area and Fort Lauderdale. It also manages other more traditional apartments, a fleet of micro-studios, a workforce housing brand called Noah, and a family-oriented housing outfit, called Kin. When the pandemic sent the work-from-home-forever dominos falling, Common faced a challenge to its existing shared-living model and saw an opening to launch a new kind of housing structure, designed specifically for a crowd of laptop-toting professionals who want to stop working from bed, but aren’t heading back to the office anytime soon.
The company’s proposed “Remote Work Hub” would be a scratch-built effort to blend work and life from the ground up: These home-office complexes would boast email cubbies, phone pods and conference rooms integrated with apartment lobbies, for example; worker-residents might take a short “commute” down an elevator or across a park to WeWork-style hot desks.
On Tuesday, Common released a Request For Proposals inviting developers, property owners and public representatives from cities, counties or states to make the case for launching such a hub in their region. Common is presenting this site selection process as a public competition in the hopes that under-the-radar, more affordable cities will apply. Think of it as an Amazon HQ2-style contest for an unsettled employment era, aimed at tapping into the “tech exodus” from the Bay Area and other spendy coastal hubs.
