Stroll through any major city in the United States and you’re sure to find an excess of completely built out, potentially useful, vacant spaces. Whether it’s a restaurant only open for dinner or a vacant retailer, there is no lack of finished, usable space.
Spacious saw these vacancies as opportunities and sought to occupy them by creating cost effective co-working spaces that also generated additional income for landlords. Primarily, they found restaurants that were closed during the day and converted them into co-working space for urban professionals.
This business model was appetizing enough for WeWork (renamed The We Company) to acquire Spacious for $42.5 million this past August. Fast forward four months later, and as of December 31st 2019, WeWork shut Spacious down. What went wrong?