Publishing Company Vacates Former Block Space In Downtown Oakland
A prominent downtown Oakland office building once again has space for new tenants after a publishing startup that had occupied the fourth floor elected to give up its space.
The 78K SF at 1955 Broadway, a building known as Uptown Station, has been occupied by Callisto Media since 2021 after it was vacated by Block, the mobile payment company helmed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. Block still inhabits 200K SF in the building.
Avison Young listed the Callisto space for sublease on Monday, the company confirmed to Bisnow. Avison Young's Amber Merrigan, Mark McGranahan and Tim Hogan are marketing the property.
Callisto reportedly laid off 35% of its workforce last summer, according to the San Francisco Business Times, which first reported the sublease. In October, the company said it would "immediately restructure its operations to focus on long-term stability and profitability in the face of the current economic environment" and trimmed its staff by another 200 people.
Callisto employees were told at the time the company wouldn't enforce a back-to-office policy, the Business Times reported.
Oakland’s office market hasn’t been hit as hard as its San Francisco counterpart but is still struggling. Avison Young reported a 23.6% vacancy rate for the East Bay/Oakland market in its Q4 2022 review.
The market also clocked 26K SF of net absorption, a massive improvement over the previous quarter’s 463K SF of negative net absorption.
