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A Costa Mesa office space once occupied by the troubled coworking provider WeWork has been replaced by another flexible office space provider, Serendipity Labs Inc.
The New York-based company, which positions itself as an upscale coworking brand in the United States and United Kingdom, committed to 39,000 square feet at Pacific Arts Plaza. The building is located at 3200 Park Center Drive in Costa Mesa.
Serendipity Labs signed a lease for office space on the top two floors of a 15-floor high-rise across the street from South Coast Plaza and adjacent to Segerstrom Center for the Arts.
The lease marks Serendipity Labs’ first location in Orange County, where the company said it is “actively pursuing additional locations to create a network” in OC.
The Costa Mesa location will open in July and feature private office and team suites that can accommodate up to 100 employees, coworking membership and on-demand access to meeting rooms.
“We are designing and operating this facility to deliver on our promise to support employers and employees alike—offering a workspace that addresses their need for flexibility, agility and service,” Serendipity Labs President Melissa Cates said in a statement.
Pacific Arts Plaza, owned by Newport Beach-based Irvine Company, opened in 1981 and was renovated in 2004. Tenants include Randall Coffee Humphrey LLP, Pacific Oak Capital Advisors, Mastro’s Steakhouse and Greenhouse Coffee Bar & Eatery.
Serendipity members will have access to work lounges and meeting rooms across the entire Serendipity Labs network, including the company’s location at 915 Wilshire Blvd., a 22-story Class A office high-rise in downtown Los Angeles.
Major companies that used Serendipity’s coworking spaces included American Express, Amazon, AT&T, Compass, Electronic Arts, EY, JP Morgan, Oracle, Tesla and Verizon.
Serendipity Labs was founded in 2011 and has since grown to have 30 locations.
WeWork Vacates Orange County
WeWork, whose peak valuation as a private company was $47 billion in 2019, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2023—about four years after it opened its space at Pacific Arts Plaza.
Mike Adams, a managing director at Dallas-based Stream Realty Partners’ Irvine office, said WeWork left its Costa Mesa space shortly after the bankruptcy. The location was part of 170 sites that WeWork closed throughout the world as part of its bankruptcy restructuring, Adams said. The company has also closed other OC locations, including spaces at Lakeshore Towers and The Boardwalk, both in Irvine. WeWork still has coworking spaces available at Park Tower in Costa Mesa and at 2211 Michelson Drive in Irvine, according to its website.
Coworking Spaces in Orange County
Adams said coworking operators make up 2.4% of Orange County’s total operating inventory. Orange County’s institutional grade office market, he added, features 95.2 million square feet across 1,611 office buildings.
The coworking space footprint expanded by 3% nationwide but remained flat in Orange County. The county, according to Adams, is home to 118 coworking locations and 2.3 million square feet of space.
Adams said the region is a top 25 market, nationally, for the coworking office segment.
“As a whole the office market has remained relatively flat from an availability standpoint. The good news is that availability in class A product has been on the decline and the current sublease rate is 3.2% so there are limited options for groups looking to sublease,” Adams told the Business Journal.
“As we see office product getting torn down for alternative uses there are certain pockets of buildings that have seen a tremendous pickup in leasing activity.”