WeWork Closing Its Second-Ever Location at 349 Fifth Avenue
By Nicholas Rizzi April 9, 2021 11:20 am
reprints
WeWork’s continued shedding of spaces to shore up its balance sheets claimed the coworking giant’s second-ever location at 349 Fifth Avenue, which co-founder Adam Neumann once said put the company “on the map.”
The company exited its lease for the entire 48,000-square-foot building across from the Empire State Building, Crain’s New York Business first reported.
“Over the last 12 months WeWork has continued to optimize its global real estate portfolio as a part of the company’s plan to achieve profitability,” a spokesperson for WeWork said in a statement. “With an abundance of supply in our markets, we have been able to rightsize our footprint while also ensuring our members can continue to access first-class flex office space.”
WeWork first signed a 15-year deal for space in Zar Property NY’s eight-story building in 2010, which gave WeWork four large ad banners on the side of the building, according to Reeves Wiedeman’s “Billionaire Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork.” Neumann later told Zar those helped “put [WeWork] on the map,” according to the book.
“We are actively targeting occupiers for single or multiple floors and users for the entire commercial component of the building,” David Zar, a principal at Zar Property NY, said in a statement. “The four vertical exterior banners offer phenomenal visibility and company branding to the millions of tourists who will very soon return directly across the street to visit the Empire State Building and shop on Fifth Avenue.”
After a disastrous 2019, WeWork has been shedding spaces, renegotiating its leases, cutting its workforce, and selling off acquisitions to cut its huge cash burn. WeWork also agreed last month to go public by merging with a blank-check company, which would value WeWork at $9 billion.
