Summer should feel easier, not harder. But if you drive to work, summer often means more time in the car, not less. Road crews start their orange cone season just as the days get longer. Families head to the lake on weekends, and that traffic spills into weekday afternoons too. This is where the local suburban coworking benefits really start to show. When your office is minutes from home instead of an hour away, none of this touches you. You skip the lane closures. You skip the beach traffic. You just walk, bike, or take a short drive to a space that is ready for you.
At Brick & Mortar, we built our neighborhood offices to solve exactly this problem.
Summer Traffic Adds Up Fast
Most people expect a bad commute in the winter. Snow, ice, and short days make sense as reasons to sit in traffic longer. Summer is sneakier. Road crews use the warm months to fix highways and side streets, and that means lane closures show up with little warning. School lets out, so family trips start earlier in the day. Weekend beach and lake traffic often does not clear out until Monday morning. Put it all together, and a normal twenty-five-minute drive can turn into forty-five, five days a week, for months.
None of this shows up on your calendar. It just quietly eats your day.
The Real Cost of a Long Commute
Do the simple math. If summer construction adds even twenty extra minutes to your drive each way, that is forty minutes a day. Over a five-day workweek, that is more than three hours. Over a summer, it adds up to full days spent sitting in traffic instead of living your life.
That time does not just disappear. It has to come out of somewhere. It may be your morning workout that gets skipped because you have to leave early. It often pushes family dinner later than planned because you got stuck behind a lane closure. It may even mean putting off the doctor’s appointment you’ve been meaning to schedule because you simply cannot find the time.
A long commute is not just annoying. It is a real cost to your health and your time with the people who matter most.
Ten Minutes Beats an Hour
This is the simple idea behind Brick & Mortar. A great workspace should not require a great commute. We built offices close to home in Park Ridge, Deerfield, Glen Ellyn, Libertyville, and Arlington Heights, with more neighborhoods on the way. Instead of an hour on the highway, you get a quick drive or even a short walk or bike ride.
That difference matters most in the summer. When construction and vacation traffic are at their worst downtown and on the highways, a coworking space near home keeps working exactly the way it always does. You are not fighting road crews or beach traffic. You are just walking in the door.
The hours you get back are yours to spend however you want. A morning workout before you start the day. Breakfast with your kids instead of a rushed goodbye. An actual lunch break at your favorite local sandwich shop instead of eating soggy leftovers at your desk. Small things, but they add up to a much better summer.
A Real Office, Not Just a Desk at Home
Working from home sounds like it should solve the commute problem completely, and in some ways it does. But a kitchen table is not an office, and most people know it. It is hard to focus with laundry in the next room or a delivery at the door. It is hard to draw a clear line between work time and home time when both happen in the same twelve feet of space.
A local coworking space gives you the best of both. You get the short commute of working from home, plus the focus and structure of a real office. You leave the house, you arrive somewhere built for work, and at the end of the day you leave that behind too.
What You Get at Brick & Mortar
Every Brick & Mortar location is built around the same idea: a real workspace, close to home, without the long drive. There is more than one way to use it, so you can pick what fits your day instead of forcing your day to fit one option. The most popular ways to get started are:
- A day pass, if you need a productive day away from home or want to experience the space before committing to a membership.
- A meeting room, if you need a professional place to meet with clients or collaborate with your team—without the drive downtown or the distractions of a coffee shop.
- A private office, if you are looking for a dedicated workspace with a door that closes, giving you privacy, consistency, and a place to make your own.
But that is just the start. We also offer hourly private offices for on-demand deep-focus work or important calls, monthly coworking memberships with shared workspace access and preferred meeting room pricing, dedicated desks and focus stations for those who want a consistent workspace without committing to a full private office, and business mailboxes for anyone who simply needs a professional business address and secure mail reception close to home. Whatever your workweek looks like, there is a Brick & Mortar resource designed to support it.
Every option includes business-class fiber internet, endless coffee, and a workspace that is ready whenever you are—24/7. No long commute required.
Skip the Drive, Not the Work
Summer traffic is not going away this year, and neither is the construction that comes with it. But your commute does not have to be part of the problem. A workspace close to home means you skip the worst of the season completely, and you get real time back for the things that matter, whether that is your health, your family, or just a calmer start to the day.
You do not have to choose between a good workday and a good summer. Brick & Mortar is built so you can have both.
Ready to Skip the Commute?
Book a Tour → See a private office near home and find out what your commute could look like this summer.
Reserve a Space → Need to meet with your team or a client without the downtown drive? Book a meeting room close to home.
Get a Day Pass → Just need one easy day away from the house? Grab a day pass and skip the traffic entirely.
