Exclusive: WeWork kills plans for big coworking space in The Heights
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Dec 17, 2020

Fallen unicorn WeWork says it no longer has plans to open an 800-member coworking hub in Heights Union, the brand-new office building in the Armature Works-anchored Heights district.

WeWork confirmed to the Tampa Bay Business Journal that it has killed a 50,000-square-foot location in Heights Union that it announced in January 2019. The Heights location was the first that WeWork announced in the Tampa Bay market, though it went on to open a location in a downtown Tampa office tower at 501 E. Kennedy Blvd., renaming the tower WeWork Place.

The location within WeWork Place will remain open, the company said.

“In streamlining our portfolio towards profitable growth, we have decided not to open our Heights Union location in Tampa," a WeWork spokesperson wrote in an email. "Moving forward, we remain committed to the Tampa community and establishing WeWork Place as WeWork’s flagship location downtown. In consolidating these two locations, we look forward to providing our members with first-class, flexible space solutions in Tampa.”

Representatives from SoHo Capital, the developer of The Heights, were not immediately available for comment Thursday morning. Heights Union was developed in a partnership between SoHo and Atlanta-based TPA Group; the office development landed AxoGen Inc., a Florida medtech company, before it broke ground in early 2019.

WeWork's financial problems came long before the novel coronavirus pandemic; in August 2019, its IPO revealed that it was losing billions of dollars. The months that followed the IPO were fraught with headline-grabbing drama, from the ousting of controversial founder Adam Neumann to a $9.5 billion bailout from Japan's Softbank (though the bank ultimately walked away from a portion of that in early 2020).

As a result, WeWork has been examining its real estate portfolio, looking to rightsize its business model.

Before its downward spiral began, WeWork was planning to make a big splash in the Tampa Bay region. Beyond the central business district and The Heights, it was rumored to be considering locations in Midtown Tampa and downtown St. Petersburg.