SolidFire leases 62,000 square feet at Boulder’s Pearl West for new HQ

BOULDER – One of the Boulder startup scene’s rising stars will soon become an anchor for one of the city’s most prominent development projects.

SolidFire, which makes all-flash storage systems for data centers, has leased 62,000 square feet at Pearl West, the $80 million redevelopment of the former Daily Camera newspaper site at 11^th and Pearl Streets downtown that sits just west of the Pearl Street Mall. The plan is for SolidFire to consolidate its four offices east of the mall into a new headquarters at Pearl West, where the booming company will be able to accommodate up to 400 employees.

SolidFire vice president of marketing Jay Prassl said in a phone interview that the company explored other sites in and around Boulder, but always had a focus on remaining downtown if it could find a space large enough.

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“We have a longstanding commitment to being downtown here in Boulder,” Prassl said.

SolidFire – founded in Atlanta in 2010 by Dave Wright before the company moved to Boulder with just five employees in early 2011 – now employs more than 400 people worldwide, including about 250 in Boulder. The company’s Boulder operations are spread out among 21,000 square feet at 1600 Pearl St., 5,000 square feet at 1601 Pearl and 4,000 square feet at 1637 Pearl. The company will also move into a 13,800-square-foot spot at 18^th and Pearl toward the end of the summer, Prassl said, with plans of adding close to 100 people over the coming year “if not more.”

The new space at 18^th and Pearl will buy SolidFire time until it can move into Pearl West, where the company will occupy space on the second and third floors. Developers of Pearl West anticipate handing over core and shell spaces to tenants by mid-February so they can complete interior build-outs, and SolidFire officials said they intend to be moved in by the fall of 2016.

“We’re pretty packed,” Prassl said of SolidFire’s current space. “This is going to be a nice opportunity to bring us all together under one roof.”

Not that SolidFire won’t be back to the east end at some point, as the company anticipates eventually having more than 500 employees in Boulder. Prassl said he couldn’t comment on SolidFire’s current lease arrangements, but noted that the company plans to maintain those four properties for future expansion as needed, possibly subleasing them in the meantime. With those four sites and Pearl West, Prassl said SolidFire could support 700-plus people.

SolidFire’s ascension has been quick. The company, which doubled its employee base in 2014, has raised $150 million in venture capital, including an $82 million round last fall. The firm is widely considered one of the state’s next big candidates for an initial public offering, though company officials aren’t joining that discussion yet.

“We’re excited that people are talking about it,” Prassl said. “We’ll just have to let people know when those next moves happen.”

As for Pearl West, SolifFire’s lease accounts for roughly half of the office space available. The project is set to include about 127,000 square feet of office space, roughly 30,000 square feet for retail and restaurants, a robotic parking garage, and a movie theater.

Crestone Capital Advisors and Galvanize have leased 28,000 and 27,000 square feet, respectively. Gibbons-White Inc. president Lynda Gibbons, the leasing agent for Pearl West, said one more lease is out for signature that will complete the office space in the building. Gibbons said he project, as a whole, is now more than 80 percent leased.

Eureka, an upscale California-based burger chain, is the only restaurant or retail tenant that has been announced so far, though Gibbons said more tenants are in final lease negotiations. Gibbons said the most prime retail locations on Pearl Street, of which she expects Pearl West will be one, lease for between $45 and $70 per square foot, plus operating expenses.

Having an anchor tenant like SolidFire signed on, Gibbons said, will only help in filling the rest of the retail space given the added foot traffic the company will bring.

“It brings the right retailers,” Gibbons said. “We’ve had a ton of retail activity, but we’re trying to round up the right retail mix.”