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Crazy but might not be that unusual, I know the Exploratorium in SF had a $1 a year rent from the government for a long time and still managed to struggle financially.

It's a good point though, if my rent was $1 I feel like it'd be hard to f that up but these institutions are clearly more complicated than they seem like they should be from the outside : /

I think the GP is saying:

friend is successful at "co-working" space, and believes that "maker" space business is hard to make profitable.

You nailed it. Thank you for clarifying for me

I read that as he convinced towns to lease to his coworking spaces for $1 but in his opinion maker spaces are not viable.

Correct. The owner of the co-working space was able to get rent for one dollar (for the co-working space, because it drives tons of foot traffic with meetings and such) and the coworking space is wildly profitable. However, his opinion on maker spaces is that they are wildly unprofitable and even he couldn’t find a good business model there