Growth of Medellín promotes the consolidation of coworking

Recently, the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) showed numbers that attest to the economic reactivation of Medellín, with the recovery of more than 500,000 jobs lost during the health crisis and an unemployment rate of 10.7% for the March quarter. – May 2022 (the lowest in four years in the city).

(Colombia is preparing for the next ‘boom’ of ‘coworking’).

This panorama, hand in hand with the encouraging local economic predictions, have promoted foreign investment in the municipality, which in 2021 reached the figure of 200 million dollars thanks to the development of 22 projects that represented more than 3,700 new parking spaces. worked, according to the Medellin Cooperation and Investment Agency (ACI).

With the changes in work habits, which went from face-to-face to virtual and are now moving through an increasingly dominant hybrid model, lhe flexible offices, which had already been gaining a significant presence in the sector before the pandemic, have now turned out to be an ideal proposal for traditional companies and also for startups and ventures, which are increasingly dominant in the productive sector of Antioquia. In fact, a report by Co-Work -a benchmark in the coworking sector in the country and the top player in this industry in Medellín- projects that this market will grow in 2022 in the region three times more than in previous years.

This is one of the reasons why the multinational, which has been promoting hybrid work by offering flexible work spaces, has increased its investment with the inauguration of two new coworking offices in the capital of Antioquia, thus adding five buildings in different perimeters in the Aburrá Valley.

(The office market improved again in the first quarter).

The activation of these two new offices, one in the Edificio Campestre 1643, on Av. El Poblado; and another in Astorga, a few meters from the Parque del Poblado, Provenza and the Metro; had an investment of a little more than 7,000 million pesos. With this capital, 4,888 square meters (m2) of offices were adapted, which will impact some 800 people in the capital of Antioquia.

It is worth noting that, with this infrastructure, the company becomes the flexible office company with the largest number of offices in Medellin and the second in terms of square meters (m2) of participation, with a total of 8,709 m2 available only in the Valley. de Aburrá, thus adding 825 jobs, in addition to the more than 600 that are already available in the other offices in the city.

In the case of Campestre, this building has 1,620 m2 distributed in 321 workstations, between private offices (almost 70%) and shared workstations. “We have four meeting rooms, an auditorium and booths. It has the capacity to house up to 321 coworkers”, commented Sebastián O’Ryan, co-founder and CEO of Co-Work.

Likewise, it allows people from the south of the Aburrá Valley to have a space to work close to different points of interest without having to cross the city and face traffic.

Astorga, on the other hand, is located a few blocks from Av. El Poblado and Calle 10, offering multiple access options to public transportation. It was built, considering that from floors 5 onwards they will be destined for clients who need unique and exclusive spaces designed according to their needs.. It was built as a proposal to impact a commercial place and very privileged in location.

“This headquarters has 3,268 m2. In the first 4 floors we have 232 workstations, distributed in private offices and shared spaces. It has the capacity to accommodate up to 232 people under the coworking model and more than 220 in the custom model”, O’Ryan added.

(Flexible offices, a model that will gain strength after the pandemic).

With the activation of this renewed infrastructure, the multinational invests more than 3 million dollars in Medellin and 2 million dollars in Bogota, which guarantees an important contribution to national economic growth. It will soon open three new offices: two in the country’s capital and one in Barranquilla.