The Best Coworking Spaces For Utah Entrepreneurs

Salt Lake City Area

I recently started working full time on a startup and decided to look for a coworking space in Salt Lake City. Somewhere along the way, I had the (really dumb) idea (given the glacial pace at which I write) that it would help other people if I did a write up about the best coworking spaces in the area. I visited a lot of places; here are the ones I thought were tops.

The places below are listed in no particular order. They all do things a little differently and the “best” option will depend on what you’re looking for in a coworking space. What they have in common is they all do what they do very well—and that’s why I included them. Enjoy!

Salt Mine

Salt Mine is a relative newcomer to the Utah coworking space scene. Opening in early 2016 and located in Sandy near 7800 South and 1300 East, the place has a modern, open feel and high ceilings. Salt Mine has jumped right in to helping the Utah startup community, providing a terrific venue for events put on by Beehive Startups and other groups seeking to foster growth and innovation in Utah.

A dedicated desk at Salt Mine costs $259/month and includes 24/7 access to the space, along with some additional perks like access to a kitchen, a gym membership to adjoining VASA Fitness, 8 hours of free meeting room time each month, ample free parking and discounted conference room reservations. The gym next door is huge and has pretty much everything, including basketball courts, a three-lane lap pool and racquetball.

Yeah, that’s right, I said racquetball. When my brother and I were kids growing up in Phoenix, we didn’t want to go to summer camp and our parents wouldn’t let us stay home alone. So every day for an entire summer, we rode our skateboards to the local racquet club where we spent about 30 minutes channeling our inner Marty Hogan—and the next 7? hours hitting racquetballs as hard as we could at each other, maxing out on every weight machine and seeing who could reach the highest top speed on the rowing machines while listening to “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake. I share this only to inspire you with the limitless possibilities afforded by a coworking space with a full-service gym next door.

The dedicated desks at Salt Mine measure 48” x 25” and are available in either regular or stand up heights. There are also booths for taking phone calls.

If you don’t need a dedicated desk or 24/7 access to a workspace, you can join Salt Mine at the “Community” level for $99/month. Community members have access to the shared workspaces in the front section of the building during Salt Mine’s regular hours—8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Friday. The shared spaces are at least the same size as the dedicated desks and there seemed to be a bit more natural light and more people interacting in this section of the building when I was there, which I thought were both good things. This membership level may be the way to go unless you definitely need 24/7 access or you place a high value on having a dedicated desk where you can leave your stuff at the end of the day.

Overall, it feels like Salt Mine is a terrific coworking alternative that not only offers events, opportunities to collaborate with people and helpful resources for entrepreneurs, but also a place where you can just put your head down and get things done. As an added bonus, Salt Mine is very close to Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons. Snowbird is a mere 13 miles away, for example—less than half the distance when compared to any of the coworking space options in downtown SLC.

Work Hive

It’s a testament to how new most of the coworking options in Utah are that I can say that Work Hive opened “way back” in 2012. Combine their proven track record with the brand-spanking-new space that Work Hive just moved into in April of 2016 and you end up with a really compelling option for coworking.

For $250/month, you get 24/7 access to a spacious, height-adjustable dedicated desk measuring 63” x 31”, a kitchen, a place to store your bike, conference room usage (scheduling is via a shared calendar) and a shower in the building. Like nearly every place I visited, there are other options available at Work Hive including private offices, 10-day passes and a “Drop in” membership ($125/month) that provides access from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM three times a week.

The coworking space at Work Hive is awash in soft, natural light. It’s fantastic and is probably the most notable thing differentiating Work Hive from every other place I visited.

Work Hive is located at 307 W 200 South in Salt Lake City. As everyone knows, you can’t swing a dead cat in downtown SLC without hitting a UTA TRAX station or bus stop. It’s about a 4-minute walk to Work Hive from Planetarium Station on the Blue Line and FrontRunner is nearby with quick and easy bus connections, as well. Because so many of Work Hive’s members ride bikes or take public transit, parking is not included with the monthly membership fee. This keeps costs down for those who don’t need parking. For everyone else, parking is available onsite for an additional monthly fee (around $45, I believe).

You can tell when you’re in a space that was designed for coworking. These spaces tend to have larger coworking areas, have more members and provide a nicer environment in which to work. When it comes to these spaces, however, there are still varying approaches—some really focus on collaboration and providing resources and connections for entrepreneurs, while others are more about providing a place where people who know what they need to do can just be hyper-productive. Work Hive is a perfect example of the “designed for coworking” space that has chosen to focus on being an awesome place for people to be productive. They don’t do classes, they only do a couple of events per month and there aren’t a ton of formal resources for entrepreneurs. This isn’t to say there aren’t people doing startups at Work Hive—about half of the members are doing exactly that. There are also lots of freelance designers and other professionals who come to Work Hive for the interaction and productivity benefits that are often not available in a work-from-home setting. I think it makes for a great mix of people and collaboration definitely happens, albeit more informally. There are currently about 40 dedicated desks at Work Hive, with plans to add another conference room and a few more private offices later in 2016.

To sum things up, Work Hive is a really great option for people who want to work (or don’t mind working) downtown, who thrive on natural light and well-designed space and who don’t need coworking that offers a ton of support and resources for entrepreneurs beyond a place to be wonderfully productive.

Holodeck → Access Salt Lake

Note: Holodeck will soon become Access Salt Lake. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll refer to it as Access Salt Lake since that’s how people will come to know it and how they’ll search for it online.

As it stands right now, Access Salt Lake is a really good coworking space and one I would definitely recommend checking out—even if there weren’t a ton of exciting changes on the horizon. I’ll get to those in a minute, but first, let’s cover the basics.

Access Salt Lake is located at 175 W 200 South in Salt Lake City. Like other downtown locations, getting there is a snap because there are six TRAX stations within half a mile of the place. FrontRunner is also nearby and becomes an even more convenient option when you consider that buses depart Salt Lake Central Station pretty much every three minutes and head down 200 South right past Access Salt Lake (and Work Hive).

A dedicated desk at Access Salt Lake runs $300/month and includes 24/7 access. There are about 40 dedicated desks, each measuring 60” x 29”, and a section of the dedicated desk space is directly underneath a large skylight. For your monthly membership, you get all the things you’d expect from a coworking space—use of conference rooms, a place to park your bike, printing, a place to take phone calls, a kitchen, mail service, etc. There’s also a shower onsite, a nice extra for people who like to bike to the office or work out mid-day. Parking, if you’d like it, costs an additional $50/month, though there may be options to have Access Salt Lake subsidize some of the cost.

If you don’t need a dedicated desk or 24/7 access, you can use the large shared space from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Friday for $100/month. Alternately, you can pay $200/month for 24/7 access to the shared space. In other words, there are lots of options to accommodate a variety of needs.

What’s most exciting about Access Salt Lake are its plans for the near future. Now led by SLCircle and Accelerant co-founders Joel Smith, Dean Lundberg and Thor Roundy, Access Salt Lake will undergo renovation in the coming months to make the entire space more open, modern and light—with a focus on health and wellness that should make Access Salt Lake an even greater place to work.

Along with these physical changes, Access Salt Lake will also be bringing together a host of business and tech resources for entrepreneurs. The vision is to create a vibrant and active startup community with the connectedness of a co-op or family. Networking events, learning sessions, user group meetings and office hours (where entrepreneurs can connect 1-on-1 with industry and functional experts) are already happening and will continue to increase. Efforts are also in the works to bring in anchor tenants, including a few in-house, startup-focused service providers to assist entrepreneurs with their tech, media and marketing, financial and legal needs.

Access Salt Lake already has a successful record of helping launch new startups, having “graduated” about 40 companies. The most recent of these was Homie, which recently moved into its own space. With new leadership and an expanded vision, Access Salt Lake is hoping to build on Holodeck’s success and become the go-to place for entrepreneurs who are looking for as much support as possible to launch a successful new venture or accelerate growth of an existing business.

Impact Hub Salt Lake

Impact Hub Salt Lake, located at 150 S State St, is another solid coworking option in downtown Salt Lake City. I imagine anyone who joins will be very happy with their decision. Impact Hub is committed to providing a lot of support and resources for entrepreneurs, hosts numerous events and get-togethers and is a great place to connect and collaborate with other members of the Utah startup community.

A 24/7 dedicated desk at Impact Hub costs $225/month. I counted only 14 (or so) dedicated desks, but the place is very spacious and has a lot of private offices, conference rooms, meeting space, etc. Along with your 60” x 29” dedicated desk, you get access to conference rooms (reservable via a shared calendar), mail service, a GREENbike membership for $1, a 50% discount on membership at The Gym at City Creek (yep, there’s racquetball), access to Impact Hub networking and educational events and all the other things you would expect from a coworking membership. There are places to take phone calls and you can park your bike inside. Being located downtown, public transit options abound. The nearest TRAX station is Gallivan Plaza Station, which serves the Green and Blue Lines and is a 5-minute walk to Impact Hub.

For $200/month you can have all of the benefits of a dedicated desk, including 24/7 access to Impact Hub, but with a shared desk instead and no mail service.

Lighting (including natural light) is very good throughout the building. Of the downtown SLC coworking spaces I visited, I thought the amount of natural light at Impact Hub was second only to Work Hive’s—and it was excellent on the third floor. If natural light is your thing, but you’d like a little more formal support and resources for your startup than productivity-focused Work Hive offers, you should check out Impact Hub.

At the time of this writing, Impact Hub Salt Lake is one of 86 Impact Hubs throughout the world. According to the Impact Hub website, there are an additional 21 locations in the works. As a member of Impact Hub Salt Lake, you can access any of the other locations—a nice benefit for anyone who is looking for coworking space in Utah but who travels frequently to—and wants to work from—other cities that have an Impact Hub.

SLCC Miller Business Innovation Center

Salt Lake Community College supports entrepreneurs through the Miller Business Innovation Center. The Center is located at 9750 S 300 West in Sandy, which is just off I-15 (300 West is a frontage road) and about one mile north of the South Jordan FrontRunner station. You could walk, bike or take a bus to the Center from South Jordan Station. For those who drive to campus, parking is free.

A dedicated desk at the Miller Business Innovation Center costs $125/month and includes 24/7 access to a large, L-shaped cubicle. Astute readers will infer from my use of “large” as a descriptor that I didn’t bother to measure. When it comes to geometry, my motivation falls off dramatically beyond basic rectangles, though I will frequently compute the area of multiple circles to know which size pizza offers the best value.

Shared coworking space is a mere $55/month and also includes 24/7 access. The largest tables in the coworking area measure 84” x 36”, though you may need to share that space with another person if a lot of people are coworking. I would guess those instances are pretty rare, however, since every place I visited seemed to have plenty of shared space available and the Miller Business Innovation Center was no exception. The Center also has a balcony with tables and chairs if you’d like to get some fresh air and work outside. Like the other places I visited, shared space and dedicated desks are available on a month-to-month basis.

While most places I visited had private offices for rent, the Miller Business Innovation Center is the only place where the cost of a private office actually makes it a tempting alternative. Private offices at the Center require an initial 12-month contract (after that it’s month-to-month), but the cost is a very affordable $20/ft2 per year. Using higher math, that means you could rent a 12’ x 10’ private office for $200/month, which is bonkers. Other people must have figured this out, too, because the Center is currently very close to or at capacity for dedicated desks and private office space—you may need to wait for something to open up.

Lest you think I like it solely because the workspace options are so affordable, the Miller Business Innovation Center also provides many of the benefits that are offered by some of the better-known coworking spaces along the Wasatch Front. In addition to classes, one-on-one help, mail services and a kitchen area, the Center hosts two monthly meetups: (1) a lunch where people can exchange ideas and talk about their new ventures and (2) a “Bagels and Business” morning series where industry and functional experts share advice on topics such as marketing, fundraising, legal, etc. and are available to answer questions. Conference rooms are available by reservation and there’s a place to park your bike inside the building.

The Miller Business Innovation Center at SLCC should be a great and very affordable coworking option, especially for those who live in southern Salt Lake County and/or who don’t want to cowork downtown.