Orlando Business Journal

Matthew Richardson

When Jon Pirtle and his team visited Orlando a year ago to meet with Lincoln Property Co. executives about expanding his firm’s co-working space, it was like he saw the city for the first time.

“[Orlando] is not just Disney,” Pirtle, CEO of E|Spaces (pronounced E-Spaces) told Orlando Business Journal. “This is the next ‘it’ town.”

Pirtle, who lives in Nashville where E|Spaces is based, said the vibe he felt in Orlando was much like Nashville — what he describes as a vibrant place for technology and young, skillful workers.

That’s the very reason he and his team agreed to open an E|Spaces location at the Church Street Plaza — the planned $100 million, 217,000-square-foot office tower that broke ground in downtown Orlando on Aug. 29. In fact, Pirtle said he wants the E|Spaces office in Orlando to be the company’s crown jewel — the biggest, most luxurious co-working space it has to offer.

Pirtle said by the time E|Spaces opens its local 29,000-square-foot office in 2018 or 2019 — around the time Church Street Plaza will open — it will be the company’s fifth location. “This is the first place where we have the ability to take the whole floor, and we want this to be our flagship place. We want to be big in Florida and branch out through South Florida from there.”

E|Spaces joins a bevy of co-workers spots in downtown Orlando such as Catalyst, Canvs, Co-Lab and Factur, housing hundreds of startups and well-established companies with cheap, flexible space to collaborate on idea and seek advice.

E|Spaces, which has nearly 500 companies that use its offices, is not just a place for startups, but for larger companies, too. Pirtle, who said E|Spaces houses some HCA Healthcare and Nissan employees, explained that larger companies use its office space to attract younger workers or even find fresh talent. “Millennials prefer a better, flexible workspace over increased salary. Young people don’t want to go to work at common work spaces. They want collaboration and an open environment.”

The co-working space trend has been growing slowly over time as more startups pop up and as large office space dwindles. “We are seeing a growth of co-working spaces as a result of the internet for individuals to create businesses with minimum platforms,” Jeff Sweeney, senior director of commercial real estate agency Cushman & Wakefield in Orlando, told Orlando Business Journal. “One of the things co-working spaces can do is allow someone to start small when it’s difficult for a startup to rent a 3,000-square-foot space.”