Inside Seattle’s newest co-working space, where Centrl Office is taking over former WeWork location

Centrl Office is open for enterprise in Seattle.

The Portland-based co-working firm moved into its first location within the metropolis, taking up a former WeWork area within the historic Kelly-Springfield Building within the Capitol Hill neighborhood. GeekWire acquired a primary have a look at the sprawling area this week.

With seven places, together with three in Portland and two in Los Angeles, 7-year-old Centrl is bullish on the flex area market as extra employees and firms settle into how they collect and work following the pandemic.

“Those that we’re seeing are extra collaborators, they’re needing workplace area however they only want it à la carte as an alternative of renting a headquarters or an enormous crew workplace,” mentioned Centrl co-founder Alex Hughes. “They don’t need to commit for 10 years, they’re simply committing typically for month to month.”

Like different co-working areas, Centrl gives quite a lot of options relying on how folks and groups need to work. This consists of shared work areas, assembly rooms, places of work obtainable to hire by the day, week or month, and extra. Costs and memberships range.

WeWork, which nonetheless operates seven places within the Seattle space, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy final fall. The corporate, as soon as valued at $47 billion, moved into the Capitol Hill location at 1525 eleventh Ave. in 2020, and moved out this previous February. Amid its restructuring, WeWork has been making strikes to hold onto leases at its different places.

Regardless of WeWork’s collapse, co-working is prospering in Seattle as employers lower their actual property footprints and modify to workforces which have settled into distant and hybrid work types. GeekWire visited co-working spaces in December and talked to house owners and employees about why all of it works.

Seattle’s workplace market continues to wrestle popping out of the pandemic, as emptiness charges reached practically 29% within the second quarter, in keeping with a brand new report from Colliers. And JLL mentioned that “energetic demand continues to be far overshadowed by obtainable provide” within the broader Seattle space workplace market.

Within the Centrl area this week, employees busily assembled furnishings, laid down rugs, and embellished to prep the area for Thursday’s opening and the primary clients. Hughes mentioned some former WeWork members will probably be coming again as a result of they needed to remain within the neighborhood.

“And we’ve seen plenty of teams which are in conventional area, as leases are ending they’re beginning to consider extra versatile choices,” Hughes mentioned.

Centrl has taken all 5 flooring of the redeveloped 1917 constructing, as soon as residence to Kelly Springfield Motor Truck Firm, then REI, after which Worth Village. There’s 53,000 sq. ft of co-working area, and the fourth flooring — which WeWork as soon as deliberate as a devoted area for Microsoft — is obtainable for conventional lease at 17,000 sq. ft.

A big rooftop deck options panoramic views of the neighborhood and components of downtown. On the block under, the high-tech indoor golf expertise 5 Iron Golf opened in 2022, and Mt. Pleasure, a sustainable hen sandwich startup by tech entrepreneur Robbie Cape opened its first brick-and-mortar location in December.

Preserve scrolling for extra images from GeekWire’s tour of Centrl Workplace: