‘A Continuum of Workplace’

A rendering of a Serendipity Labs Coworking facility. The firm has grown to more than 100 locations, with more on the way.

RYE, NY—Serendipity Labs Coworking’s announcement Monday that it had selected Worth Hotels LLC as its development partner for the Dallas-Fort Worth area is part of two series. The Worth Hotels announcement will be followed later this summer by the opening of 10 new locations in the Chicago metro area as well as new sites in Nashville. It also continues with the model Serendipity Labs has employed as it has rolled out what is now more than 100 locations nationwide: franchising its developments and selecting those franchisees primarily from the hospitality sector.

The franchise model dates back to John Arenas’ early days in the workplace-as-a-service business, the Serendipity Labs CEO tells GlobeSt.com. “That started in the early 1990s with a company called Stratis Business Centers, which is really an executive suite format, much more like Regus,” he says. “We built a network of company-owned and franchised locations, and the idea was to use franchise as both a capital strategy and as an overall strategy to provide coverage, so we could be an enterprise solution, not just a solution for our members or our clients at the time, but a solution for companies so they could solve a broader problem geographically.”