WeWork wants to scrap its South Beach co-working space.
The firm, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring in November, put the branch at 429 Lenox Avenue in Miami Beach on the chopping block, according to a notice WeWork filed in court on Thursday.
The closing would be the first Miami-Dade County outpost WeWork wants to scrap as part of its restructuring plan. The outpost is among those listed in the filing’s “schedule of rejected unexpired leases.”
WeWork has six branches in South Florida, all of them in Miami-Dade County. This month, it announced it’s keeping four outposts. They are at the Wynwood Garage, 360 Northwest 27th Street in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood; 78 Southwest Seventh Street in Brickell City Centre in Miami; and two Coral Gables at 2222 Ponce de Leon Boulevard and at 255 Giralda Avenue in the Giralda Place. Both of the Coral Gables offices are at the Giralda Place mixed-use complex.
The fifth outpost is at the Southeast Financial Center at 200 South Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami. In 2017, WeWork leased 90,000 square feet on four floors at the 55-story tower owned by billionaire Amancio Ortega’s Pontegadea real estate firm.
The Southeast Financial Center branch is listed in the “schedule of assumed unexpired leases” in WeWork’s court notice, signifying it may also be keeping this outpost.
WeWork first filed a motion to reject its Miami Beach lease last month, though the firm said it was still hoping to remain at the location. At the time, a WeWork spokesperson said that it was in talks with the building’s owner but so far had been “unable to reach an agreement with our landlord,” the South Florida Business Journal reported. The April filing to potentially reject the lease was submitted to the court in case WeWork fails to reach a deal with the landlord.
Now, WeWork confirmed it had finalized its decision to close the outpost.
“As part of WeWork’s restructuring, which has now completed in Miami, we have made the difficult decision to end our operations at 429 Lenox Avenue,” a WeWork spokesperson said in a statement.
Miami-based Azora Exan owns the five-story, 80,000-square-foot office building at 429 Lenox Avenue. The building was fully leased to WeWork when Azora Exan bought the property in 2022 for $37 million.
Led by Juan Jose Zaragoza, Azora Exan is a joint venture between Madrid-based private equity manager Azora Capital and Miami-based real estate manager Exan Capital.
A representative at Azora Exan’s Miami office would not comment, and a manager for the Lenox Avenue building didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Led by CEO David Tolley, WeWork has carved a future path for 97 percent of its leases globally, including keeping or reworking leases. This would reduce the co-working firm’s total rent commitments by more than $11 billion, according to a WeWork news release issued this month.
WeWork is keeping more than 170 outposts in the U.S. and Canada and 337 globally.
WeWork’s reorganization plan includes shedding $4 billion in debt and gaining $450 million in new financing, mostly from Santa Barbara, California-based property tech company Yardi Systems.
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