Syngenta will move 200 employees into WeWork space in Uptown

Syngenta Seeds Inc. has confirmed that it will move 200 of its employees from Minnetonka to the WeWork co-working offices in the new MoZaic East building in the Uptown area of Minneapolis.

Syngenta, whose parent company is headquartered in China, has made a commitment to take a full floor of WeWork's more than 100,000 square feet of space in the building.

"The new location offers us more flexibility in a collaborative working environment," said Syngenta spokesman Paul Minehart in an e-mail.

Syngenta's lease at the Crest Ridge Corporate Center in Minnetonka ends in June, Minehart said. Syngenta has about 400 employees in Minnesota in seven locations.

Megan Dodds, general manager for the Midwest for New York-based WeWork, said last month that WeWork has seen a great deal of interest from "enterprise" or larger corporate users that want to take up short-term, collaborative co-working space.

Co-working space continues to grow in the Twin Cities, with it making up about 1.2 percent of the Twin Cities multitenant office market, or more than 900,000 square feet, an increase from about 0.9 percent last year, according to real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.

The MoZaic East building, one of a handful of recent speculative office buildings that began construction without a signed tenant, is scheduled to be completed this fall. WeWork's space, which will fill a little more than half the building, is expected to be ready by the beginning of December.

The Ackerberg Group developed MoZaic East, which is on Fremont Avenue S. close to Lagoon Avenue. It was built on a surface parking lot behind its MoZaic West office building.

Nicole Norfleet • 612-673-4495