Industrious, AvalonBay Team on Flex Offices in Multifamily Campuses

Hybrid workers who aren’t keen about returning to the office will soon be able to work at home and go to the office at the same time in Southern California.

Flex office operator Industrious is partnering with AvalonBay Communities to create ground-level coworking space throughout the apartment giant’s multifamily portfolio.

The flex office offering—to be known as SecondSpace—will debut at an existing AvalonBay complex in Monrovia, a suburb of Los Angeles, and at an AvalonBay community under construction in nearby Brea.

The SecondSpace in Monrovia will encompass 1,400 SF at an apartment campus located at 821 S. Myrtle Ave.; the Brea campus, at 185 S. State College Blvd., will include 2,400 SF of flex office space.

“The evolution of work is showing that most workers don’t want to commute daily to office spaces, but don’t want to work from home every day either,” said Jamie Hodari, CEO of Industrious, in a statement.

According to Hodari, creating flexible workspaces in AvalonBay’s residential communities “fills that gap—meeting employees where they want to be (close to home) and empowering the individual with a choice they didn’t have before.”

Industrious is differentiating SecondSpace from common business center amenities by offering them private offices and access to conference rooms with multi-monitor setups.

Industrious is offering flex office space “memberships” for $500 monthly—the SecondSpace units are available to building residents and non-resident members. Membership also bestows access to the entire Industrious network of flexible workplace locations.

Industrious did not provide details for the lease agreement with AvalonBay, other than to indicate that the flex office startup uses a “sharing” formula.

In May, CBRE announced that it would invest another $100M in Industrious, bringing the brokerage’s total investment in the flex-space operator to $330M.

Industrious has deployed its backing from CBRE to build a global network of flex office coworking sites, adding 1M SF of office locations in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, France, Belgium and The Netherlands to its primary hubs in the US and UK.

As part of its stake in Industrious, CBRE has folded its own flex-space brand Hana, with locations in the US and UK, into Industrious. CBRE also gained two board seats on Industrious’ board of directors.

AvalonBay is the third largest apartment owner in the nation, with a portfolio including 80,000 units on the East and West coasts.