Flexible workspace provider Workbox is moving its headquarters to where it thinks Chicago's "center of gravity" is for new and exciting growing companies.
After expanding to 10 locations earlier this year and the addition of a 65,000-square-foot lease at 220 N. Green St. in a former WeWork space, the coworking space operator has decided to make the Fulton Market location its base of operations moving forward.
Founded in 2019, Workbox has grown from nine employees to 35 nationwide — and plans to move around 20 of them to its new headquarters. Workbox focuses on small, early and growth-stage businesses for its portfolio.
"We were based in our very first location at 20 N. Wabash for five years and were running out of space," John Wallace, co-founder and CEO of Workbox, told Chicago Inno. The company's new location is "in a submarket that we wanted to get into and it's very important to the demographic of companies that we are attracting," he said. "The amount of new company formations, the types of companies coming to Fulton Market and all of the tech talent in the neighborhood has created a center of gravity for new and growing companies."
While there's been a recent push from companies like Amazon Inc. to roll back on remote work to get employees back to the office, Wallace said the trend has actually been to the benefit of the coworking space industry.
"I think more people downtown is better for our industry," he said.
Workbox, which raised $17.5 million in Series A funding in June, now has six locations in Chicago and 10 nationwide. Wallace hopes to double that total over the next 18 months, which will come with further expanding the team.
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