REI to Sell Its Never-Been-Used Headquarters Outside Seattle

(Bloomberg) -- Outdoor sporting-goods retailer REI is pursuing a sale of its brand-new headquarters in a Seattle suburb, a example of how the pandemic is causing companies to overhaul their real estate needs.

REI’s new offices will be less centralized and “span multiple locations across the region,” according to a statement announcing the change. The company will also encourage more remote working.

“The dramatic events of 2020 have challenged us to re-examine and rethink every aspect of our business and many of the assumptions of the past,” Chief Executive Officer Eric Artz told employees Wednesday, according to the statement. “Our new experience of ‘headquarters’ will be very different than the one we imagined more than four years ago.”

Several corporations have been weighing drastic changes to their footprint in the wake of the coronavirus and success with employees working from home. Facebook Inc. has said as much as half of its employees may be working remotely in the next 10 years, while banks such as Citigroup Inc. have weighed opening satellite offices in suburbs outside New York.

The about-face from REI is particularly jarring. The decision to move its headquarters to the Spring District, a new transit-oriented development in Bellevue, Washington, was celebrated when it was announced in 2016. The company had initially intended to move into the 8-acre, 400,000-square-foot campus this summer.

But the retailer said the changes announced Wednesday would help it attract and retain a more diverse group of employees, because they’ll have more flexibility about where they live. REI also said that selling the headquarters would have “financial benefits” and shrink its carbon footprint.

The company didn’t give a potential sale price for the campus. But a nearby 343,528-square-foot building in the Spring District that’s leased to Facebook recently hit the market and is expected to fetch $325 million to $350 million.

REI, with more than 160 locations in 39 states and Washington, D.C., closed its stores in early March as the virus began spreading rapidly in the Seattle region and other parts of the U.S. The company was also among the first in the country to shut corporate offices and shift employees to remote work.

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