Late last night/early this morning, I saw via Twitter that Uber was going to sublease 117,000 square feet of its office space at The Epic development in Deep Ellum, leaving it with just two floors of the building (around 50K sf). Which, I suppose, wouldn’t be the biggest deal, if Uber hadn’t already been planning to build out a second tower — Epic II — to serve as its regional hub. This story says it still will and plans a 2022 move-in date, but [wide eyes emoji].
ANYWAY, I say all this to say I jokingly almost nailed this exact scenario a year ago (the date says November 2019, but given magazine lead times I was writing it basically right now).
September 7, 2020
Uber officially canceled plans to move into the larger 22-story tower at The Epic, an announcement that has been rumored for months. “Would I call it a belt tightening? No,” said new Uber spokeswoman Tamara Katz. “We felt like a scaled-back office was more in keeping with our roots. Lean and mean, right? We pride ourselves on being a company that is able to quickly react to any given situation and this is no different. We still love being in Deep Ellum, and I think, if I may, this move is very much in line with our neighborhood’s rock-and-roll past.” She declined to elaborate. “I think it speaks for itself. But I can tell you that we have 50 very happy employees. Almost 50. I just saw a few of them kicking a ball back and forth under the highway if you want to ask them yourself.”
More TK.
