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Internet marketer Main Street Hub has ditched two Downtown Austin office buildings to consolidate its three operations in East Austin.
The move and consolidation, first reported in 512Tech, follows reports in January that the company had refinanced its debt and intended to expand by another 200 workers in Austin. The company occupies space in 111 Congress Ave. and 600 Congress Ave., as well as New York City.
An estimated 1,000 employees will occupy a four-story headquarters off East Sixth Street between Chicon and Robert Martinez. That puts the headquarters, slated to open in 2019, close to much of the new apartment and condominium development in East Austin.
"Austin is the perfect home for Main Street Hub," Main Street Hub co-CEO Andrew Allison said in the announcement of the building. "Our mission is to help create thriving local economies by bringing businesses and their customers closer together, and there's no better illustration of the effect that great local businesses have on a community than Austin."
Historically, Downtown Austin has been the preferred location for nonmanufacturing midsize technology companies in Austin. Cirrus Logic, Spredfast and Facebook all have a presence in Downtown office towers. Google is an anchor tenant in the 500 West 2nd project which opened last month.
CoStar market analyst Sam Tennenbaum said it would be difficult to find 100K SF of contiguous office space anywhere in the Austin office market. That is why companies such as Facebook and Oracle have committed early to new construction. Facebook has leased 230K SF in 3rd+Shoal, while Oracle is building 500K SF in southeast Austin.
Most of the addition of office in East Austin has come from the redevelopment of older flex/industrial space. The one exception would be the construction of Texas Mutual Insurance's new 270K SF building in Mueller, set to open in 2018.
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