OEN Member NewsVacasa leases 61,000 square feet for new headquarters in Portland’s Pearl District (Portland Business Journal)
Vacation rental management company Vacasa is expanding its headquarters with a 61,000 square foot lease in the Pearl District.
The company is taking over all the office space in the newly built Heartline Building, at Northwest Johnson Street and Northwest 13th Avenue. It will retain the 36,000 square feet it currently leases in the RiverTec building just up the street at 926 N.W. 13th Ave., giving its operational footprint a campus-like feel.
The company plans to sublet part of that existing space, said CEO Eric Breon. Teams that are more independent, such as customer service and inside sales, are likely to stay in the existing space.
Vacasa has grown quickly since it launched in 2009. The company is a vacation rental management business that works with homeowners to market, book, clean and maintain properties. Its proprietary pricing software uses hundreds of data points to set prices.
Fast-growing Vacasa moved into its Pearl District headquarters in the summer of 2016. It consolidated employees that had been in two offices into 40,000 square feet in the RiverTec Building at 926 N.W. 13th Ave.
It has grown to more than 1,800 employees globally with 320 in Portland. The company’s headcount has jumped by about 50 percent every year, with the company currently seeking engineering and inside sales workers.
The company has more than 8,000 homes on its platform. Last fall, the company raised $103.5 million.
Vacasa moved into its current office two years ago. About a year ago executives began discussing expansion. Six months ago, they started touring spaces.
Because the company is keeping its existing spot, the extra room at Heartline became a viable option.
“We have plenty of space to grow,” he said.
Vacasa will take the second through fifth floors of the new building and will have a rooftop deck. Move in date is August.
Breon plans create to a ski condo look for the lobby, with a living room and kitchen. The elevator banks would sit where the bedrooms would normally be.
Breon doesn’t expect any complications from having a campus headquarters instead of everyone in one building. The company has experience with distributed teams due to a growing office in Boise and offices in South America and Europe.
Vacasa signed an 11-year lease with Seattle based Security Properties, the site’s developer.
“We’ve been watching Vacasa’s fast growth over the years and choosing them as a tenant was natural for us,” said Michael Nanney, senior director at Security Properties in a written statement.
“With a proven business model and recent vote of confidence from the investment community, Vacasa is exactly the kind of company we were looking to partner with.”
Source: www.bizjournals.com
