WeWork is officially Manhattan’s largest private office tenant
Photo via WeWork
With 5.3 million square feet of office space, WeWork is officially Manhattan’s largest private office tenant. Last month, we reported that the co-working giant needed just 74,000 more square feet to take the title from JPMorgan Chase & Co., and with their new, 258,344-square-foot location at 21 Penn Plaza, their 50th in the borough (they have 60 in NYC total), they’ve now surpassed them. The news comes via a blog post by WeWork exec Granit Gjonbalaj, who credits the company’s “expertise” and the team’s “holistic nature” that has allowed them to “identify, build, and deliver new locations better and more quickly than a typical developer.”
Prior to their most recent lease, WeWork occupied roughly three percent of NYC’s office space, but this figure is expected to grow to between five and 10 percent over the next decade. How are they achieving this after being founded just eight years ago?
As 6sqft previously explained: “To lure new tenants, WeWork is offering commercial real estate brokers a 100 percent commission on the first year of rent paid by any tenant who switches to WeWork from a competing company by October 1.” For 12-month leases, they also offer 50 percent off the first year’s rent. And with the discount, “broker bonuses from WeWork are about five times the standard commission it usually offers.”
But NYC isn’t the first city where WeWork has achieved this milestone. Gjonbalaj notes that they became London’s largest private office tenant at the beginning of the year (just four years after opening their first location there) and in Washington, D.C. this past summer. Worldwide, they have 300+ locations that are open or about to open, spread across 87 cities in 23 countries, and home to 300,000 members. In New York, WeWork has 50,000 members.
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