Meta Nails Down Another Sublease at Sixth and Guadalupe

Slowly but surely, Meta is chipping away at a massive subleasing block in its 589,000 square feet of space in its Sixth and Guadalupe tower in Downtown Austin.

The Malin, a New York-based coworking firm, signed a lease on Sixth and Guadalupe’s 30th floor for 32,000 square feet, according to the Austin Business Journal. This is the second Malin-branded coworking space on the Austin market; the firm leased a 12,000-square-foot open concept office at 1515 East Cesar Chavez Street in 2024, which is set to open to coworkers on Oct. 1. The East Austin location offers upscale amenities such as access to an executive assistant and other concierge services, along with a blend of private offices and communal work tables.

Meta is certainly hoping that The Malin is a raindrop that starts a flood. The Malin joins PricewaterhouseCoopers and Weaver & Tidwell in the building previously earmarked for Meta employees, but there’s still 488,225 square feet available, according to the outlet.

In 2021, Meta pre-leased all of the Sixth and Guadalupe office space, but never moved in and began looking for subtenants over a year before the tower was completed. In 2022, the tech conglomerate formally put half of the building, 33 floors of the 66 floor tower at 400 West Sixth Street, up for sublease. The office space has struggled, but the street-level retail has retained tenants, and the upper level residences are seeing leasing success.

At the height of the pandemic, tech tenants were inking leases all over Austin, from downtown proper to Austin’s second downtown, The Domain. The post-pandemic retention of hybrid work schedules and a partial tech return to Silicon Valley has left multiple office landlords holding the bag. After five years, Google finally occupied the space it leased at the Sail Tower, but Indeed put space in its namesake tower up for sublease last year.

— Hunter Cooke