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NYTimes
New York Times
18 Aug 2024
Stacey Freed


NextImg:The Hotelification of Offices, With Signature Scents and Saltwater Spas

Visitors to the Springline complex in Menlo Park, Calif., are surrounded by a sense of comfort and luxury often found at high-end hotels: off-white walls with a Roman clay finish, a gray-and-white marble coffee table and a white leather bench beneath an 8-by-4 resin canvas etched with the words “Hello, tomorrow.” Springline’s signature scent — hints of salty sea air, white water lily, dry musk and honeydew melon — linger in the air.

But Springline isn’t a hotel. It’s a “work resort,” meaning that its office space designs have taken a page from boutique hotels.

The complex is a 6.4-acre town square steps from the Menlo Park Caltrain station in San Francisco’s Bay Area. It includes two premium office buildings, nine restaurants, outdoor work spaces and terraces where people can mingle and connect, gym facilities, a high-end golf simulator, an upscale Italian grocery store and a 183-unit residential building. And like any good resort, it has a calendar of community events from craft cocktail fairs to silent discos.

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The lobby entrance to the residential building at Springline.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times
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Springline’s plaza is another communal space.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

With an office vacancy rate at about 20 percent in the United States, according to Cushman & Wakefield, downtown business districts are trying whatever they can to get workers back — including resort-like work spaces that match or surpass the comfort of their homes.

The concept comes from “the image of a resort, of a beautiful location or a beautiful building, something that makes you say, ‘I want to see this experience, I want to be there,’” said Matthias Hollwich, founding principal of the global design firm HWKN who is designing a work resort complex, Sky Island at Canada Water, in London. “It’s not like home. It’s not like the other office buildings. It’s novel.”


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