Why WeWork Is Expanding Its Footprint in Orange County

The Orange County market has been slow to adopt co-working offices, but that may be changing. WeWork is opening a third location in Orange County, at 18691 Jamboree Road in Irvine. The new facility will target professional and business services and is evidence that co-working will grow in the market and in new industries. Orange County will now have more WeWork locations than San Diego, but is still far behind the 19 locations in Los Angeles.

“As our global WeWork platform has grown, we’ve seen interest in joining WeWork span far beyond our traditional tech startups and small business into professional services and enterprise,” Kley Sippel, general manager for Southern California at WeWork, tells GlobeSt.com. “Orange County is home to all those types of business, so it only makes sense that we’d start building the WeWork community there, too.”

The slower growth in Orange County, however, may not be a sign of lower demand for co-working. It could be that there are more facilities in Los Angeles available to accommodate the co-working space and the characteristics that WeWork needs in a building. “That may be because of the number of locations, perhaps,” says Sippel. If you look at inventory relative to available office space, we’ve actually been relatively aggressive in Orange County as well. Orange County will be crucial to our growth in 2019, with thousands of new desks coming online across the area.”

The newest WeWork location in Orange County fits the company’s needs. It is located on the sixth floor of the building, which is located in the Irvine Business Complex, and it will be the largest co-working facility in Orange County, able to accommodate more than 1,000 member. The building offers tons of amenities, which are important for the co-working brand, including bike storage, outdoor lounges, fitness and wellness center, a sky garden, parking, covered outdoor amphitheater, and on-site dining options. “The best WeWork locations are those that anchor the local community,” adds Sippel. “Since first exploring The Boardwalk project it was clear that this flagship property from would becoming a center of gravity for the Irvine area and the perfect spot for our next WeWork location.”

The new location opens in Spring 2019, but it is expected to be popular, as are the other co-working projects in Orange County. “We’ve seen high occupancy across all our Orange County locations and interest in this property is strong,” says Sippel. “We recently began touring an expect The Boardwalk to open at record capacity for the Orange County area, and maybe even Southern California overall.”