WeWork unveils new downtown San Jose offices, eyes more sites in city

SAN JOSE — WeWork on Friday unveiled a new set of offices in downtown San Jose’s River Park Towers complex, using the event to announce that the office is the first California site of the co-working company’s endeavor to offer discount rates for startups and fledgling entrepreneurs.

This new office in River Park Tower, perched on the banks of the Guadalupe River, means WeWork now has 2,700 downtown San Jose members — employees of companies that sublease co-working spaces from WeWork.

“We have opened two locations in San Jose, and we are looking to double again in size here,” said Elton Kwok, general manager, Northern California for WeWork. Besides the River Park Tower operation at 333 W. San Carlos St., WeWork also has leased a location at 75 E. Santa Clara St., both in downtown San Jose.

While not formally open, 152 N. Third St. is slated to be a third location for WeWork, according to the co-working company’s website. WeWork now is eyeing a fourth location it hopes to open by year’s end.

“We are looking for a location right now,” Kwok said.

The West San Carlos Street site also is home to an emerging WeWork concept: WeWork Labs has space on the fifth floor where it will offer discounts of 10 percent to startups and new entrepreneurs whose enterprises show promise.

Akin to the quest for affordable housing, the idea here is the affordable office.

“With WeWork Labs, we want to provide local entrepreneurs with resources so they can grow and succeed,” said Bailey Dodds, expansion manager North America for WeWork. “Our goal is to provide resources for startups, for high-growth new companies.”

Tech titans such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon, through combinations of property purchases and building leases, have gobbled up a vast amount of space in Silicon Valley and nearby areas such as San Francisco.

Yet this unprecedented hunt for expansion spaces has also consumed the supply of offices — and driven up rental costs — at sites that small companies are seeking for their own operations.

“The big guys are squeezing the little guys out. We love those jobs, but we need a Valley for all,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said during the WeWork event. “One solution is to provide greater access for all.”

Cases in point: Just around the corner from the new WeWork offices, Adobe intends a vast expansion of its three-building headquarters campus by constructing an adjacent fourth office tower where the tech giant would employ 4,000. A few blocks to the west, Google has proposed a transit village of office buildings, homes, shops and restaurants where 25,000 could work, including 15,000 to 20,000 of the search giant’s employees.

“So many companies have found their way to San Jose,” City Councilman Johnny Khamis said.

At present, WeWork has slightly more than 1,500 members working at its first downtown San Jose location at 75 E. Santa Clara St. and another 1,200 at 333 W. San Carlos St., according to Kwok.

In downtown San Jose, WeWork also has ownership stakes in the Bank of Italy building at 8 S. First St., public records show, and is involved with the efforts to develop the Museum Place office and retail complex on Park Avenue.

Roughly 80 percent of the businesses in San Jose are “micro businesses” with about 20 employees, as Matt Mahood, president of The Silicon Valley Organization, put it.

“Small and medium-sized businesses need places to thrive in San Jose,” Mahood said.

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