AKRON, Ohio -- At OSC TechLab's office in downtown Akron, inside the former Ohio.com offices at the corner of East Exchange and Main streets, 16 companies share one space.
Programmers to public speaking coaches, otherwise unrelated professionals share coffee, wireless Internet, printers, donuts and even beer. There are bright orange and blue walls, ergonomic chairs, couches and a conference room.
The 2,400-square-foot space is Akron's first co-working space, a growing form of real estate that offers freelancers and remote employees respite from the monotony of their home offices.
Nick Petroski opened the TechLab in 2014 with nearly twice the space as his first shared workspace, Office Space Coworking, up the street at Main and Market. He says demand for his shared office space is growing as more companies hire employees who work remotely.
"We really wanted to create a space specifically for tech people," Petroski said. "You can't have a guy with flip flops next to an attorney bringing a client in."
Among the company's 16 paying members are Patrick Regan, a 29-year-old who works for San Francisco-based marketing company SalesForce, and Josiah Sprague, who works for Sparkart, an Oakland design firm.
Regan moved from Iowa eight years ago with his wife, then a graduate student at the University of Akron. Sprague grew up in Tallmadge and says he isn't really interested in moving anywhere.
"The weather is a pretty good argument to be elsewhere," Sprague said. "Other than that, Akron is a great place to be. You can go hiking, have your own space. Financially it's a good place to be."
But the tedium of working from home led to cabin fever, Regan said, and coffee shops provided little in the way of security or camaraderie.
"My wife worked from 2 to 8 p.m. and I would just keep working until she came home," Regan said. "I felt like the whole day would just disappear and I hadn't done anything but sit at a computer."
At $300 per month for 24-hour access to the space, and $100 per month for limited access, the TechLab is cheaper than a rented office suite, and all of the memberships are month to month. It also offers an unexpected benefit. With people from different firms and companies in one space, the office sometimes turns into a networking environment.
Jon Knapp moved his web design company Coffee and Code into a private office suite at TechLab, which holds up to four people and cost him $600 per month. For that, he gets unlimited access to the lab's facilities, a private corner office, and a platform to advertise his company's services.
"We keep the door open as often as we can," Knapp said. "Referrals are much better than we could ever hope for if we had just shared a normal office."
On Thursdays the space is open to the public. A production assistant from a cable television show sat on a sofa and talked to entrepreneurs about inventive businesses in the area.
In another corner, the conversation strayed into a discussion about bizarrely named tech accessories.
"You don't know what a dongle is, seriously," Zach Blackburn, a web developer, prodded his neighbor, who didn't know the name for Apple computer attachments. "I guess the point is that we take all types in here."
Petroski tried to differentiate his space from a business incubator, which provides fixed term discounted leases for startup companies, but said that he hoped the TechLab might spur some companies to grow into their own office spaces.
"We hope that some of these companies actually outgrow our space, if they are successful, and maybe then they move across the street," Petroski said.