Going up against the likes of WeWork and Common Desk, office supplies retailer Office Depot has added coworking to its cart with the opening in Irving of one of the company’s first Workonomy Hub workspaces.

The establishment of a Workonomy Hub coworking space inside the Office Depot store at 1000 W. Airport Frwy. coincides with the opening of a similar location in Lake Zurich, Illinois. Office Depot debuted its coworking concept last August in Los Gatos, California.

The Irving-Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce will host a May 7 ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s first Workonomy Hub. The Airport Freeway building is just east of Baylor Scott & White Medical Center.

Geared toward freelancers, remote workers, startup entrepreneurs, and small business owners, Workonomy Hub offers private offices and conference rooms, as well as access to mailing, shipping, marketing, printing, and tech support services. In addition, Workonomy Hub members can take advantage of special events, speeches, and networking opportunities.

“Coworking spaces are a natural extension of our retail stores and are the latest example of our company’s transformation from a traditional office products retailer to a broader business services and solutions provider,” Kevin Moffitt, executive vice president and chief retail officer at Boca Raton, Florida-based Office Depot, says in a release.

Office Depot’s chief competitor, Staples, already has jumped into the coworking business with an offering that recently was rebranded as Staples Studio. None of Staples’ coworking spaces operates in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Research published earlier this year by commercial real estate company Colliers International found that among 19 major markets in the U.S., DFW is No. 1 for coworking growth. In the Metroplex, the amount of coworking space in downtown markets and core submarkets soared 250 percent from the fourth quarter of 2016 to mid-2018, winding up at nearly 370,000 square feet (roughly equivalent to the size of two Walmart supercenters), Colliers says. That figure excludes suburban markets.

In January, commercial real estate company JLL reported coworking space, also known as flexible space, represented 1.7 percent of office inventory in DFW. “Flexible space providers are finding opportunities in catering to new arrivals to the metro area and rapidly growing users [of space] as population growth continues unabated,” JLL says of DFW.