The CBRE-backed operator is targeting its first San Fernando Valley foothold with an April opening at Douglas Emmett’s open-air lifestyle center, as it simultaneously inks new deals in Burbank and Manhattan
Industrious, the flexible workspace provider now backed by CBRE following a $400 million acquisition in early 2025, has signed a 22,000-square-foot lease at the Sherman Oaks Galleria, marking its first coworking outpost in the San Fernando Valley. The company’s director of real estate, Natalie Levine, indicated in a statement that the operator is specifically targeting lifestyle-integrated locations — environments where workers can be productive while having everyday amenities within arm’s reach. The Sherman Oaks location is slated to open in April 2026.
The new space, located at 15301 Ventura Boulevard within the Douglas Emmett-owned mall, will span two floors and accommodate 257 dedicated office seats alongside 50 seats available for on-demand access. The property sits within one of the San Fernando Valley’s most prominent mixed-use destinations. The Sherman Oaks Galleria is a centrally located open-air business campus and lifestyle center featuring four distinct commercial buildings — including the 16-story Comerica Bank Building — that blend Class-A office space with a vibrant retail and entertainment complex offering shopping, dining, and recreational options, according to a report by Commercial Observer.
The Sherman Oaks deal is the latest in a string of transactions that underscores how aggressively Industrious has moved since CBRE absorbed the company. In the Southern California market, Industrious signed an 18,000-square-foot deal with Douglas Emmett at Studio Plaza in Burbank this past January, and last April inked a 16,000-square-foot agreement at Douglas Emmett’s 150 South Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The pairing with Douglas Emmett across three consecutive SoCal deals points to a deepening strategic relationship between the two firms, with Industrious increasingly selecting buildings that carry an amenity-forward, lifestyle-oriented positioning consistent with its brand.
The company’s expansion has not been limited to California. In late February, Industrious signed a 22,000-square-foot lease at HSR’s 386 Park Avenue South in New York City, and earlier that month announced an 18,000-square-foot opening at the Rosen family’s 902 Broadway. Together, the four deals — totaling roughly 80,000 square feet — highlight how CBRE’s financial backing has accelerated Industrious’ ability to deploy capital in high-demand urban markets on both coasts.
The timing of Industrious’ push into lifestyle-anchored locations aligns with broader national coworking trends. Coworking workplaces expanded 15 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025, driven in part by companies with increasing in-office attendance requirements that are turning to flexible operators to handle expansion space, according to a Coworking Cafe report. According to that same report, employees at 97 percent of Fortune 100 companies are subject to hybrid or full-time in-office requirements, typically in four-days-a-week arrangements, a normalization of attendance policies that has left many companies needing more physical office capacity.
The Los Angeles market, in particular, has become one of the nation’s most active coworking arenas. As of October 2025, the metro’s flex space inventory totaled 7.2 million square feet across 322 locations, up from 6.5 million square feet at the end of December 2024, according to CoworkingCafe data. Los Angeles ranked third among peer metros for coworking inventory, behind Manhattan and Chicago, with its flexible space representing 2.4 percent of total leasable office inventory — above the 2.2 percent national average. Industrious itself had already secured a sizeable foothold in the market before the latest round of activity, with 513,041 square feet across Los Angeles as of that same period, ranking it fifth among all coworking operators in the metro.
At the same time, the broader Los Angeles office market continues to wrestle with elevated vacancy. The Los Angeles office market recorded negative net absorption in 2025, with a vacancy rate approximately 186 basis points above the national average, and average direct asking rent sitting at $3.48 per square foot — a slight decline from the prior year, according to Kidder Mathews’ Q4 market report. In that environment, operators like Industrious that can absorb larger blocks of space and repackage them as flexible product offer landlords like Douglas Emmett a way to maintain occupancy without waiting for traditional long-term tenants to commit.
Alongside its real estate moves, Industrious is undergoing a significant leadership transition. The company announced this week that Gentry Long, formerly its chief commercial officer, has replaced Anna Squires Levine as president. Long has been with Industrious since 2021 and previously served as executive vice president of North American operations. The promotion positions Long — who has overseen much of the company’s domestic growth strategy — to lead the firm through what appears to be one of its most ambitious expansion phases to date.
The Sherman Oaks deal neatly encapsulates the thesis Industrious is now executing at scale: rather than competing purely on price or square footage, the company is placing its product inside destinations that workers already want to be. Industry analysts note that coworking operators have shifted from chasing footprint alone toward investing in larger, more versatile spaces concentrated in markets and formats that can support long-term hybrid demand, according to a Q4 2025 Coworking Cafe industry report. Embedding in the Sherman Oaks Galleria — a property that transforms from a bustling professional campus during the week to a family entertainment hub on weekends — reflects exactly that calculus. For companies looking to attract and retain employees in the post-pandemic era, the promise of a workspace that competes not just on amenities but on convenience may prove to be the company’s most effective growth lever yet.
