I've been in and out of involvement with hackerspaces for 5 years now. It seems like hackerspaces still have not reached any sort sustained viability yet. Most need to operate as non-profit organizations that are barely hanging on. Even Techshop and other large makerspaces seem to be doing an awful lot of work for a hardly self-sustaining amount of revenue.
Is there a killer business model that hackerspaces are missing out on? Recruitment and training for businesses? Providing or referring services that are useful to entrepreneurs?
What can make this sort of space a growing business rather than one that builds a little, then just fades over time.
Need, or choose? The hackerspace I am part of (SplatSpace, in Durham, NC) is a non-profit and that was very much a conscious and pointed decision at the beginning. Nobody involved was interested in trying to make a for-profit business out of it. Everybody just wanted a cool place to hang out and tinker / build / learn / etc. And we got that.
Anyway, to the question of whether or not you can make a viable (for profit) business out of a hackerspace. I don't know. As you note, TechShop has struggled, as have some of the other "for profit" hackerspaces I've seen come and go. My gut feeling is that there's just a sort of fundamental impedance mismatch of sorts between "hackerspace people" and "for profit" hackerspaces.
If there is a way, I think it would have to be aiming it more towards businesses and less towards individual hackers. A startup that needs a place to prototype their new physical -world device (robot, self-driving car, drone, etc.) might pay more for shared use of tools and equipment. Of course some individuals would probably still show up. I think. :-)