The response to San Jose has “been great so far,” said Evan Cranston, WeWork’s community manager in San Jose. “Over 60 companies have signed up, from a freelancer to a 60-person company.”
At 75,000 square feet, WeWork’s arrival at Valley Towers — home also to the Mercury News — is perhaps the most significant lease in years for downtown San Jose. When all five floors are open in October, it will have enough room for roughly 1,500 people, or 100 to 200 small companies. That’s a huge injection of entrepreneurial mojo into a central core that historically has been dominated by sleepy professional services firms. (ABC Accelerator, based in Slovenia, has announced it will bring its program to WeWork’s new location; the accelerator works with European companies in a variety of fields, including health and “smart cities.”)
It’s also jazzing up a tired office complex with historically high vacancy; since the WeWork deal was signed, building owner Harvest Properties is embarking on a spruce-up that is adding amenities like a gym, showers and outdoor lounge. A deal with a high-end coffee bar is in the works for a long-empty ground-floor space. And a fresh coat of paint is livening up the concrete exterior.
God, @manch, I still say then why are you buying in the city then? Yes, I am a SF native and LOVE it here but it sounds like the jobs and everything else (relative pricing advantage) is down there in your old stomping grounds. I know you have said that appreciation may be better up here but I don’t know about that…
I thought Oracle or whoever owns it now dropped the ball with that building. It was empty for a long time and now PwC is in part of it. They could have fit a ton of startups in it and been a hub for the South Bay.
WeWork is just an RE company leasing office space with foosball tables. There is absolutely zero tech in it. Yes its valuation is nuts. That SoftBank guy is also nuts.
A big office park city does not constitute a world class city. You need attractions. You need amenities. You need a reason for someone from Peoria to Paris to want to say, “Hey, Honey, let’s fly not to SFO but direct to Mineta Airport to explore San Ho to its fullest…” (stop laughing)
What does that mean or matter? Is Las Vegas big by any stretch of the imagination? Yet, it draws plenty of tourists, no? Again, things to do and see. Hello? Is this rocket science now?
Look, for reasonably bright people why do you guys argue that San Jose is such a great town? Perhaps for living or working, but that is it. There are not enough things there to entice people from outside to want to spend money and go there for vacation. In fact, so many people have written to the contrary it is embarrassing. Pretty sad when Fry’s is your biggest attraction…
Was just talking to a coworker about this. Honestly there is currently too much BS aka gluten, vegan, etc. Food is food, period. None of these options existed in the stone age and nobody complained.