Amazon’s Grabs Latest WeWork Offices in Santa Clara

Amazon’s partnership with WeWork for office space continues as the e-commerce giant seeks a place for its employees amid its return-to-office mandate.

The Seattle-based conglomerate is adding 141,000 square feet to its Silicon Valley portfolio through a sublease at a WeWork-leased building at 4980 Great America Parkway in Santa Clara, CoStar reported. WeWork signed the lease to fully occupy the six-story building with the Sobrato Organization, the property’s landlord and original developer, in May. That lease will take effect within the next few weeks.

In these office space partnerships, WeWork signs a lease for space that it then subleases to Amazon and operates as Amazon offices on Amazon’s behalf. This arrangement allows companies like Amazon to quickly grow their real estate holdings while maintaining some flexibility should future changes arise.

“We’re constantly evaluating our office footprint based on the needs of Amazon’s businesses,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement to CoStar.

The move comes as Amazon implements its five-day in-person work requirement, rolled out early this year. But it has had to work with limited space for its employees across the country. So far, the company has struck deals to move into WeWork-controlled offices in the Bay Area, New York City, Dallas and Nashville.

While Amazon sought to have all its workers back in the office five days a week almost immediately, it pushed the return-to-office deadline in some cities by several months as workers in places like Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta and New York had no office space to go to due to remote hiring and post-pandemic company growth. An Amazon spokesperson told CoStar that “there may be different timelines” for RTO depending on location.

In December, Amazon grabbed 217,000 square feet of offices through a license agreement with WeWork for offices at 401 San Antonio Road in Mountain View, California. That building has been occupied by companies like Facebook and LinkedIn in the past.

On the other side of the country, WeWork signed a lease for 304,000 square feet of offices on Amazon’s behalf at 330 West 34th Street in Manhattan in December, weeks before the Mountain View deal in the Bay Area. — Chris Malone Méndez