Autodesk to clear out of two floors at its SF headquarters

Autodesk will further tighten its real estate belt in Downtown San Francisco.

The construction and engineering software firm will put 73,000 square feet of offices on the market for sublease at One Market Street in the Embarcadero, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

The two-floor listing comes less than a year after Autodesk moved its headquarters and 578 employees from its now-shuttered office in San Rafael to One Market Street, while closing other offices around town.

“As more Autodesk employees take advantage of our flexible workplace options, we’ve reassessed how we use physical office space to support the evolving needs of our team and business,” a company spokesperson told the Business Times in an email.

Autodesk leases 284,000 square feet at One Market, owned by Paramount Group, and 30,500 square feet at Pier 9. The pending trim will cut its office headquarters to 211,000 square feet.
The HQ listing is short-term, with one floor available through the end of this year and the other floor through June 2026.

Autodesk’s offices, while benefiting from a prime Downtown location, competes with a long list of offices left empty by dozens of firms since the start of the pandemic and rise in remote work. More than 27 percent of San Francisco’s offices now sit vacant, by one estimate.

The company, which employed 12,600 worldwide last summer, had said it would reduce its leases by 20 percent.

In January 2021, Autodesk closed its new 117,000-square-foot office at 300 Mission Street in San Francisco, which had only been open for about eight months. It also closed an office at 3900 Civic Center in San Rafael.

The company cited an employee survey that found most employees preferred to work remotely and to come in for “specific meetings or opportunities to collaborate,” the company’s spokesperson said at the time.

Autodesk had indicated it would try to sublease its 300 Mission office as well as its former headquarters of nearly three decades in San Rafael, but it’s unclear whether it has any takers.

— Dana Bartholomew

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