Centrl Office is open for business in Seattle.
The Portland-based co-working company moved into its first location in the city, taking over a former WeWork space in the historic Kelly-Springfield Building in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. GeekWire got a first look at the sprawling space this week.
With seven locations, including three in Portland and two in Los Angeles, 7-year-old Centrl is bullish on the flex space market as more workers and companies settle into how they gather and work following the pandemic.
“People that we’re seeing are more collaborators, they’re needing office space but they just need it à la carte instead of renting a headquarters or a big team office,” said Centrl co-founder Alex Hughes. “They don’t have to commit for 10 years, they’re just committing sometimes for month to month.”
Like other co-working spaces, Centrl offers a variety of solutions depending on how people and teams want to work. This includes shared work spaces, meeting rooms, offices available to rent by the day, week or month, and more. Prices and memberships vary.
WeWork, which still operates seven locations in the Seattle area, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last fall. The company, once valued at $47 billion, moved into the Capitol Hill location at 1525 11th Ave. in 2020, and moved out this past February. Amid its restructuring, WeWork has been making moves to hold onto leases at its other locations.
Despite WeWork’s collapse, co-working is thriving in Seattle as employers cut their real estate footprints and adjust to workforces that have settled into remote and hybrid work styles. GeekWire visited co-working spaces in December and talked to owners and workers about why it all works.
Seattle’s office market continues to struggle coming out of the pandemic, as vacancy rates reached nearly 29% in the second quarter, according to a new report from Colliers. And JLL said that “active demand continues to be far overshadowed by available supply” in the broader Seattle area office market.
In the Centrl space this week, workers busily assembled furniture, laid down rugs, and decorated to prep the space for Thursday’s opening and the first customers. Hughes said some former WeWork members will be coming back because they wanted to stay in the neighborhood.
“And we’ve seen a lot of groups that are in traditional space, as leases are ending they’re starting to evaluate more flexible options,” Hughes said.
Centrl has taken all five floors of the redeveloped 1917 building, once home to Kelly Springfield Motor Truck Company, then REI, and then Value Village. There’s 53,000 square feet of co-working space, and the fourth floor — which WeWork once planned as a dedicated space for Microsoft — is available for traditional lease at 17,000 square feet.
A large rooftop deck features panoramic views of the neighborhood and parts of downtown. On the block below, the high-tech indoor golf experience Five Iron Golf opened in 2022, and Mt. Joy, a sustainable chicken sandwich startup by tech entrepreneur Robbie Cape opened its first brick-and-mortar location in December.
Keep scrolling for more photos from GeekWire’s tour of Centrl Office:
