New York-based coworking giant WeWork Inc. has added two more prominent Orange County locations to its quickly expanding local portfolio, which now includes five existing and coming office spots that top 200,000 square feet combined.
The locations should be able to accommodate nearly 3,500 entrepreneurs, startup employees and other workers.
More area locations will be announced over the next year, company executives said.
“Orange County has long been an underlying engine to Southern California’s growth and a place hungry for innovation,” said WeWork General Manager in Southern California Kley Sippel in a statement.
“While we rarely talk about growth, you can expect to see many more locations between San Diego and Los Angeles in the coming year.”
The 8-year-old company—already the largest shared-space operator in the world with an estimated 20 million square feet and about 340 locations—disclosed this month that it intends to establish additional offices in Irvine and Costa Mesa in towers near other area spots it already has in those cities.
n In the Spectrum area, it will set up shop at 400 Spectrum Center, a 21-story tower that opened about a year ago and whose anchor tenant is cybersecurity firm Cylance Inc.
CoStar Group Inc. records indicate a single unspecified tenant recently signed a 44,520-square-foot lease to occupy the 18th and 19th floors.
WeWork said the 400 Spectrum location will “accommodate a community of over 700 members across two floors.”
It will be the second-largest tenant at the quickly filling building, whose other recent additions include law firm Womble Bond Dickinson LLP, which will occupy about 17,000 square feet there after relocating from Costa Mesa.
The coworking firm already occupies about 44,000 square feet on the third and fourth floors of 200 Spectrum Center, a sister tower that opened down the street in 2016. It was WeWork’s first OC location when it opened shortly after the building did.
n In the Costa Mesa arts district, WeWork is adding a second, slightly smaller location at the 17-story Park Tower run by the Offices at South Coast Plaza. WeWork’s spot, 695 Town Center Drive, “will accommodate over 600 members across two floors,” the company said.
Early this year, WeWork opened its first location in the city a block away at the Pacific Arts Plaza office complex, taking up another 40,000 square feet.
Both Pacific Arts Plaza and the two Spectrum towers are owned by Newport Beach-based Irvine Co., and an affiliate of CJ Segerstrom & Sons owns Park Tower.
Both recently announced spots are scheduled to open in the spring.
Its other forthcoming OC location is near John Wayne Airport. In September, the Business Journal was the first to report that WeWork signed a lease for the new Boardwalk office development on Jamboree Road, totaling 63,816 square feet. When it opens in February, it will be the largest coworking space in Orange County and house nearly 1,000 WeWork members.
The two-building Boardwalk project was developed by the Newport Beach office of project developer Trammell Crow Co.
Pricing for OC WeWork space is currently $750 to $800 per month for private offices and about $400 a month for hot desks, spots where multiple workers can use a single work station, the company’s website says.
Leasing Frenzy
The two new WeWork deals are yet another notable sign of expansion of Orange County’s coworking market.
As of early September, the top 24 shared-space operators—which lease large blocks of space from traditional landlords under long-term deals; upgrade the facilities to meet multiple tenants’ needs; and sublease the space to startups, small businesses and other entities for as short as a month or two—had about 1.2 million square feet here, according to Business Journal data.
That’s up nearly 20% year-over-year, the growth largely due to well-funded out-of-town operators, like WeWork, Industrious Offices and Spaces.
Since September, nearly an additional quarter-million square feet—roughly the same amount of space in a larger office tower near the airport—has been snapped up by shared-space operators, bringing the area’s total close to 1.5 million square feet.
By square footage, WeWork trails only Irvine-based Premier Business Centers, an operator of executive office suites with a portfolio of about 277,000 square feet, making it second among the area’s largest shared-space operators.
While the coworking trend has attracted its share of startups and early-stage businesses, WeWork emphasizes that small companies aren’t the only ones occupying its space.
It said about 30% of Fortune 500 firms are WeWork members.
