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Miami is a winner<\/a> in the office space slump. The metropolitan area has outperformed and is set to continue to do so, according to Capital Economics. But its triumph wasn\u2019t enough to save Andreessen Horowitz\u2019s \u201cWall Street South\u201d office, it seems.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In May, the venture capital firm shuttered its Miami office two years after opening, Bloomberg reported<\/a> on Wednesday, seemingly relinquishing its hopes of building a presence in what\u2019s become a burgeoning hub for crypto and finance. Miami has been christened the \u201cWall Street South\u201d as it has evolved into a new frontier financial center with more and more companies, and the billionaires who helm them, migrating to the Sunshine State.\u00a0<\/p>\n The pandemic (and remote work) was already a thing when a16z signed a five-year lease<\/a> back in 2022, but crypto hadn\u2019t experienced its meltdown yet. So flash-forward a couple years, and there weren\u2019t enough employees using the office space, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter. The company confirmed the news to Bloomberg, but declined to comment further.<\/p>\n In late July 2022, billionaire entrepreneur Ben Horowitz, one member of the founding duo, wrote<\/a> that the firm would open three new offices in Miami Beach, New York, and Santa Monica in addition to its existing Menlo Park and San Francisco locations, and that its new headquarters would be in the cloud. Tech-heavy metros in the West, especially San Francisco, have been the worst-hit when it comes to office woes befouled by lower demand and higher interest rates. And yet it\u2019s the venture firm\u2019s office in Miami that it has decided to forfeit, one owned by none other than real estate billionaire Barry Sternlicht, a vocal opponent<\/a> of the Federal Reserve and its monetary policy.<\/p>\n Either way, it was only months later that the $30 billion empire that was FTX collapsed<\/a> in a 48-hour period. So it may be that Miami is no longer the shiny crypto hub it used to be because clearly it isn\u2019t simply remote work that\u2019s forced a16z to pull its physical presence in the Magic City. According to Capital Economics, which earlier labeled Miami \u201ca winner\u201d of the latest office cycle, office visits in the city \u201chad recovered to 90% of their pre-pandemic levels by July, well above the 72% national figure,\u201d it said, citing outside data. Plus, in the second quarter, the Miami-Dade county office vacancy rate<\/a> was 9.2%, which was much lower than the national average of 17.5%, according to<\/a> Colliers. Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately respond to Fortune\u2019s <\/em>request for comment, and a Miami office is not listed on the company\u2019s website.<\/p>\n Not to mention, recently, JPMorgan Chase<\/a> doubled down<\/a> on its office space in Miami, with plans to expand. Similarly, in 2022, Goldman Sachs<\/a> doubled<\/a> its downtown Miami office footprint and that same year, Citadel announced<\/a> its new global headquarters would be in Miami, and has continued to lease more<\/a> office space since. Oracle<\/a>, Palantir, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise<\/a> relocated their offices to Miami, too. And Amazon<\/a> happens to be looking<\/a> for some office space in the metropolitan area, following founder Jeff Bezos\u2019 move to the city\u2019s Billionaire Bunker<\/a>.<\/p>\n The former a16z office is now the workspace of Bausch + Lomb, a company that makes contact lenses, Current Real Estate Advisors\u2019 Brandon Charnas told Bloomberg. It was his commercial real estate firm that helped facilitate the new deal and original lease. \u201cWe\u2019re not seeing a ton of crypto companies saying they need an office space in Miami,\u201d Charnas said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another, Colliers\u2019 Kevin Gonzalez, who also helped facilitate the new deal, told Bloomberg: \u201cThere was a lot of hype around promoting crypto in Miami, but crypto had a small office presence even at its peak.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nRecommended reading:<\/strong>
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