North Bay coworking spaces fill back up to pre-pandemic levels
Office space has been a lagging sector occupancy-wise in North Bay commercial real estate even before the pandemic, but there are signs of more interest in coming back to the office.
In its second-quarter financial report at the beginning of August, New York-based WeWork, which has a Marin County coworking center, said its occupancy rate — the percentage of desks rented — had rebounded to pre-pandemic levels for the first time.
Nationwide, the company achieved 72% occupancy, matching the occupancy rate of late 2019, according to Bloomberg. Occupancy had bottomed out at 46% at the end of 2020, the first year of the pandemic in which many members canceled contracts to work from home.
WeWork has 25 locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, with 2 million square feet of space, according to the company.
Of that regional footprint, three-quarters of the rentable seats are being used, which is better than 68% in the New York City market and 58% in the Boston metropolitan area but well behind 97% occupancy for the Miami locations.
At the 35,000-square-foot Marin location in the 1 Belvedere Place office building in Mill Valley, WeWork has seen its All Access ($299 a month) and On Demand ($29 a day) spaces, as well as the conference rooms “regularly booked to capacity,” according to Greg Rosso, Bay Area director for WeWork.
“Employees no longer want to commute for hours a day, so having WeWork nearby is a flexible option that grants members access to a professional environment in closer proximity to their home, schools, and neighborhoods,” Rosso said in an email.
The company opened the Mill Valley location in early 2019 and by early 2020 expanded to another 26,000 square feet in the adjacent building. But as the pandemic cut into office occupancy, WeWork pared back its Marin footprint to one building.
In Santa Rosa, Cornerstone Properties’ coLab coworking space occupies 14,000 square feet of the ground floor of the 427 Mendocino Ave. office building, currently the base of operations for Business Journal parent company Sonoma Media Investments.
Occupancy was slow to grow during the initial two years of the pandemic, but the space has seen a dramatic increase of memberships ($29-$299 a month, depending on included services and hours of use) in the past six months, according to Jessie Defatte, community manager. The operation has returned to pre-pandemic membership rates.
“People are itching to get back into the office,” Defatte said in an email. “The need for some separation of home and work is drawing more people into coLAB.”
Dedicated desks and furnished private offices ($700–$1,100 for one to three occupants) are currently in demand there now, rather than shared spaces that are a common feature of coworking facilities. All the private offices are currently booked.
“While we have interest in our more flexible memberships, people are looking for a space that can be their main office that they go to on a daily basis,” Defatte said. “Both of these options give people the opportunity to be a part of a social community while also giving people their own space to be productive.”
Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Before coming to the Business Journal in 1999, he wrote for Bay City News Service in San Francisco. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.
