WeWork Partners with San Francisco to Stimulate Recovery

The city of San Francisco and WeWork are partnering to support a hybrid return to work for businesses, which they hope will help foster a post-pandemic economic recovery in the city.

WeWork says the SF x WeWork partnership intends to provide resources to help businesses return to work. The partnership offers San Francisco’s Chamber of Commerce members access to various incentives, including one month off of dedicated space when making a six-month commitment and two months off dedicated space when making a 12-month commitment. It also provides a discounted WeWork All Access membership for up to three months.

Rodney Fong, president and CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, says that bringing workers back into the office and frequenting its downtown corridor is an essential aspect of our city’s recovery. “San Francisco’s workforce brings vibrancy to our streets, foot traffic to our merchant corridors, and support of local small businesses,” he said in a prepared statement.

Before partnering with San Francisco, WeWork announced similar partnerships with New York City, Washington, DC and Miami earlier this year. WeWork says it worked closely with city officials to determine what priorities were essential to their city. After that, it developed a program aimed at those priorities. For example, it focused on the critical role small businesses play in New York City’s revival.

In these partnerships, WeWork is also providing local insights into who, where, when and why businesses are returning to work. For instance, localized WeWork data shows a 30% increase in WeWork On Demand bookings in Washington, DC, a 41% increase in Miami and a 28% increase for WeWork All Access memberships in New York City since March. On a national level, there has been a 33% increase in WeWork All Access memberships.

“A hybrid approach has proven instrumental in facilitating a return to the office for many companies, especially small businesses, to foster economic recovery,” Sandeep Mathrani, CEO at WeWork, said in a prepared statement.

While programs like WeWork’s can help stimulate the return to offices, a panel of experts convened by Trepp says things could return to normal by January 2022.

“We likely won’t see a return to the far side of densification within an office space, but we also likely won’t see a full swing the opposite way to the elimination of the office altogether,” Trepp analysts noted in a report summarizing the panel. 

And much of this will be driven by younger workers, who don’t want to work in small, expensive apartments in dense cities by themselves.  As JLL Chief Economist Ryan Severino noted, younger workers (namely millennials) typically move to dense urban cores to be able to work in an environment that fosters collaboration, facetime with leadership teams, and networking on a much more personal level.