Duolingo in the market to expand office and expected to grow in Liberty East

Duolingo is pursuing a plan to expand its office presence in the city and is expected to grow into more space in East Liberty.

The edtech company has been engaged in a recent search for added office space, represented by Kim Ford, a principal of Warrendale-based Rise Pittsburgh, and has considered property around town but is expected to focus on expanding its presence at Liberty East, the Whole Foods Market-anchored mixed-use development owned by LG Realty according to sources familiar with the search.

Ford declined to comment.

Sam Dalsimer, global head of communications at Duolingo (NASDAQ: DUOL), confirmed the company's intention of looking to expand its Pittsburgh office space footprint beyond that of its headquarters at 5900 Penn Ave. and the nearby space it occupies in Liberty East, where it took a 38,000-square-foot floor in the building announced in late November 2021 as the construction project on the since-completed development was nearing completion amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

"We're definitely committed to growing here in Pittsburgh and staying in East Liberty," Dalsimer said. "We're continuing to grow, we're expecting to add a lot more headcount next year and so we just need to be thinking and planning ahead for the growth."

He said he couldn't offer more specific details at this time in terms of how much space Duolingo is looking to add or how many people it plans to hire in the coming year.

"This is about future space planning," Dalsimer said. "Not just for next year but for beyond as well."

Dalsimer noted the recent hire of Sean Devlin, who serves as the head of global workplace & real estate at Duolingo after serving in similar roles at Netflix Inc. and Google Inc., who has been directly overseeing the company's office expansion plans in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. Duolingo employs about 600 workers, most of whom report to its Pittsburgh offices, though the company also has outposts in New York and Seattle as well as abroad in Bejing and Berlin, among others.

Duolingo took the space in Liberty East during key junctures for both it and the new development's owner, announcing the new space commitment in an SEC filing not long after becoming a newly public company and at a time when LG Realty was working to finish construction.

Amid all the challenges and managing the property through a couple of years of limited occupancy, LG Realty has been able to market Liberty East as one of Pittsburgh's first post-Covid office developments, offering more than 240,000 square feet of office space above the more than 55,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market.

Duolingo is expected to be seeking a couple floors of space, 40,000 square feet or more, to build on its established two-building Penn Avenue presence at Liberty East and the 5900 Penn Ave. HQ location, where it has around 80,000 square feet.

One source indicated the company was considering 60,000 square feet or more, an amount of space based on future expansion options.

Representatives of the property and LG Realty weren't immediately available for comment.

Duolingo has proven to be an increasingly important corporate presence in East Liberty in which an ongoing rejuvenation has mostly been spurred by new retail and residential development.

A recent report by a long-time community organization in the neighborhood, East Liberty Development, Inc., tallied up a total investment in the community at more than $1.2 billion in the past 20 years, including $75 million for Liberty East.