Office giant WeWork to close Capitol Hill location

Fallout from the bankruptcy of global office giant WeWork has reached Seattle.

The New York-based company plans to close its location on 11th Avenue in Capitol Hill by the end of February, citing its ongoing “restructuring efforts.”

“As part of WeWork’s strategic restructuring efforts, we have made the difficult decision to end our operations at Kelly-Springfield” building on Capitol Hill, a WeWork spokesperson said in a statement Monday. “We have offered affected members the option to relocate, with our support, to our other Seattle locations and deeply apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.” Capitol Hill Seattle Blog first reported the closure. 

WeWork rents both desks to individual office workers and larger office spaces to employers looking for shorter-term leases than they can find elsewhere in the market. The company filed for bankruptcy in November, after rapid growth, financial struggles and the ongoing troubles rattling the office market. Bankruptcy filings reported $19 billion in liabilities and $15 billion in assets.

Founded in 2010, WeWork has hundreds of locations across the globe, including in downtown Seattle, the Chinatown-International District, Ballard and Bellevue. 

The company did not comment on other potential closures in the region but said, “Seattle continues to be a priority market for WeWork.”

It’s not yet clear exactly how many WeWork locations will close as a result of the bankruptcy. The company said in September, before the bankruptcy, it would attempt to renegotiate almost all of its leases.

Between August and November, WeWork reportedly removed at least 45 locations from its website, including one in South Lake Union and another downtown. The company also closed a downtown Portland location this month.

The Capitol Hill location opened in January 2020, just before the pandemic upended office work. WeWork initially planned to occupy the entire building and had plans to lease a full floor of the building to Microsoft, though it’s not clear that deal ever came to pass. WeWork declined to comment and Microsoft did not return a request for comment. 

The Kelly-Springfield building is a historic location in the heart of Capitol Hill, once part of the neighborhood’s Auto Row of car dealerships and repair shops. REI occupied the building in the 1960s, followed by Value Village starting in the 1990s. The thrift store featured in the video for Macklemore’s hit “Thrift Shop” closed in 2015. The building’s redevelopment brought glassy new floors on top of the building and, later, a Macklemore-backed indoor golf center on the ground floor. 

While WeWork’s bankruptcy is a drastic case, the entire office market continues to lag in Seattle and beyond. A quarter of Seattle office space was vacant in late 2023, leaving some building owners trying to offload buildings now worth less than they paid for them and some developers pondering ways to convert empty office towers into housing. Just next door to the WeWork building on Capitol Hill, several floors of office space have appeared empty since the fall of 2020.