Archinect - News

Adam Neumann is attempting to buy his way back into WeWork

2024-02-06T20:00:00-05:00

Five years after driving WeWork into the ground, co-founder and ousted CEO Adam Neumann has now hatched a plan to buy it out of bankruptcy. In a letter to WeWork’s advisers obtained by The New York Times, Neumann and his new real estate business, Flow Global, express interest in buying the co-working space solution — but claim WeWork has been ignoring attempts to get more information so they can come up with a bid.

WeWork, meanwhile, is beginning to walk away from even more properties under the direction of new CEO David Tolley after announcing an initial list of 40 that would be relinquished in November.

Neumann had cited outside scrutiny as his main reason for leaving the company in September 2019. His attempts since December to purchase the company through his new housing startup Flow Global constitutes the second such push since Bay Area financier Dan Loeb funded the project in August 2022. The return-to-office downturn is being cited as their principal motivation. In a letter to WeWork advisers, Neumann's attorney said it would be a "value-maximizing transaction for all stakeholders."

WeWork currently owes about $18.6 billion in debts, according to their Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing from November.

WeWork seeks to vacate 40 New York properties following bankruptcy filing

2023-11-15T14:32:00-05:00

After officially filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, WeWork has released a subsequent list of 40 “underperforming locations” across New York City that the company hopes to walk away from over the coming months pending court approvals.

The news was first made public via the Commercial Observer, which also reported WeWork as identifying another 29 properties in the U.S. and Canada it plans to relinquish. The news adds to concerns over the performance of the commercial real estate market in New York and other cities. WeWork had been, until very recently, one of the biggest tenants in Manhattan.

The company has retained Hilco Real Estate to re-negotiate terms on its more than 400 outstanding leases and will allow some members to re-negotiate with landlords directly in certain cases. Current members will be transferred to better-performing locations still operated by WeWork. (The company has a total of 779 properties worldwide.)

Related on Archinect: WeWork is cutting ...

Second Home Hollywood pitched as a pandemic-friendly work environment

2020-09-25T15:37:00-04:00

At the end of 2019, Second Home Hollywood opened its doors to the Los Angeles area as a remedy for flipping the script on co-working spaces and a community-driven work environment. Designed by the Madrid-based studio SelgasCano, its fresh take on integrating the indoor-outdoor aesthetic, mixed with lush greenery, open office spaces, and wellness driven design created a working oasis for LA creatives. However, as the pandemic quickly impacted the day-to-day office grind, the transition to working from home forced a new outlook on the future of working in an office and creative workspaces.

Read Archinect's dive into Second Home Hollywood with Eric Lawler. Photograph by Iwan Baan, courtesy of SelgasCano

As California is slowly picking up the pieces and adjusting to COVID-19 safety precautions, businesses are opening; however, office culture is still reshaping its "new normal." Carolina A. Miranda of the LA Times, investigates office spaces in a post-pandemic future. Her case study, Seco...

WeWork + Airbnb = PodShare? New live-work space emerges in Los Angeles

2016-03-29T13:06:00-04:00

PodShare's site is laden with millennial-friendly tech buzzwords, like the sharing economy, pod culture, nomadic freelancers, access not ownership, and even “Podestrians,” the company's name for guests, each of whom get profiles on its website. “We’re creating a social network with a physical address,” said Beck. “Our open-floor model offers the highest rate of collisions for social travelers. We do not identify with hostels—we are a co-living space or a live-work community.”

Related on Archinect:

Can WeWork re-engineer the spatial dynamics of society?

2016-03-17T12:57:00-04:00

WeWork’s inspirational mottoes—"Do what you love," "Thank God it’s Monday," among many others—its evangelical faithful, and gatherings like the summit all have religious echoes..."Start imagining it a bit bigger," Neumann says about WeLive, stoking his idyllic view, "an entire building. And then instead of having just one building doing it, five buildings doing it. Then you’ll be able to imagine what a WeNeighborhood or a WeStreet would be."

This in-depth profile of WeWork founder and (pro-capitalist) visionary Adam Neumann is worth the read. Whether you like to freestyle your work and life or prefer the centuries-old model of deeded quiet, WeWork (and now, WeLive) is making a previously unsustainable model profitable. Is Neumann just creating a fashionable new real estate bubble, or is he reengineering the way society operates?

To catch you up:

ARExA to renovate WeWork's first co-living project on Wall Street

2015-10-21T18:28:00-04:00

The tower, owned by Rudin Management, currently has 260,000 square feet of floorspace that counts towards zoning, and of that, 133,000 square feet will become residential, resulting in 205 new apartments. The remaining 127,000 square feet will stay commercial. [...] 110 Wall Street will be WeWork’s first foray into residential development [...] The inclusion of Class B dwelling units, which denote transient housing, likely signals living options will range from communal to private.

According to CurbedNY, ARExA will head design on the renovation of WeWork's first residential project under its co-living offshoot, WeLive. Completion date is currently slated for March 2017.

WeWork is also hiring multiple positions in New York at this very moment. Check out their listings here:

WeWork: openings for Interior Design Lead; Project Architect; Building Information Specialist

UPDATE: an earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to FXFOWLE as the designer for the renovation, referring to an earlier version of the same news posted to CurbedNY.

More on WeWork and its residential foray, WeLive:

More details emerge about WeWork's residential endeavor WeLive
WeWork moves into residential development with WeLive
Working out of the Box: Miguel McKelvey, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at WeWork

Can't find office space in San Francisco? Try the mall.

2015-06-02T18:21:00-04:00

For a fledgling startup, finding an office in San Francisco can be a real nightmare. Rents are now climbing past $60 a square foot, second only to Manhattan in the US [...]. This means young startups have to get creative if they insist on staying within the city. And Westfield, one of the world’s largest mall operators, has a solution for them: Bespoke, a 37,000-square-foot coworking and event space within its shopping center in downtown San Francisco.