TikTok pulling four full floors off Austin office sublease market

TikTok is pulling almost 85,000 square feet off of Austin’s office sublease market, filings with the state of Texas indicate.

The social media company plans to spend $17 million renovating four floors at 300 Colorado in downtown’s Warehouse District, according to plans filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

TikTok is taking floors 27, 28, 29 and 32, the filing shows. IA Interior Architects has been tapped as designer of the office buildout, which could be finished by March.

The company hired JLL to market the top six floors of the 32-floor 300 Colorado for sublease back in April. The offering totaled 126,000 square feet and was being offered at $39 per square foot for shell space. The brochure has been removed from the listing, the Austin Business Journal reported.

The average asking sublease price for office space in the central business district is a little over $35 per square foot, according to Transwestern. Direct-lease asking rents are well over $69 per square foot, according to JLL.

TikTok appears to be growing its staff in Austin, where it has 55 job openings, the outlet reported. The company first acquired the space at 300 Colorado as a sublease in February 2022, after Parsley Energy was acquired by Irving-based Pioneer Natural Resources and moved out

Cousins Properties developed the building, constructed in 2020, in partnership with Riverside Resources and Ironwood Real Estate before acquiring those two firms for $162.5 million in December 2021.

More than 6.3 million square feet of office space is available on the Austin office sublease market, according to Transwestern. Some 1.6 million square feet is available for sublease in downtown.

Meta’s offering of almost 582,000 square feet at Sixth and Guadalupe is the biggest sublease available, followed by State Farm’s 317,000-square-foot space at 8900 Amberglen in Northwest Austin’s Robinson Ranch.

—Rachel Stone