Vacasa, preparing for IPO, moves into new Pearl District HQ

Vacasa chief executive Eric Breon moves around a lot.

He might start his day in a lounge on one floor, move later to a work nook on a higher level, then finish the morning working on his laptop on the Portland company's new rooftop deck.

Vacasa is touting its new, 61,000-square-foot headquarters in Portland's Pearl District. It's a showcase office for the vacation rental management company, which is laying the groundwork for a potential initial public offering.

Anticipating mammoth growth, Vacasa retained a lease on its former headquarters across the street when it moved into the new office in August. The company has 400 employees in Portland now and expects to hire hundreds more in the coming years. It designed its new office to be a recruiting tool in the city's highly competitive technology job market.

Designed by GBD Architects, Vacasa's new headquarters supplements 409 desks with 26 private rooms, 17 nooks and 25 communal spaces. Conference rooms all have exterior windows, and some of the common spaces are outdoors, on little decks carved out of the floor plan to give workers another option to get some air during their workday.

Propelled by a $103.5 million private equity deal last year, Vacasa hopes to transform the vacation rental management business. It's snapping up small vacation rental management businesses in destinations around the world and marketing clients' rental homes online.

The company employs more than 2,500 altogether - most of them cleaning and maintenance staff - and lists more than 10,000 vacation homes altogether. Vacasa announced last week it had paid an unspecified amount to buy a short-term rental company called Oasis Collections, which listed vacation homes in Barcelona, London, Milan, Paris, Santiago and Chicago.

In addition to Portland, Vacasa has satellite offices in Florida, Chile and in Idaho, where the company employs 145 in a newly renovated office in Boise.

-- Mike Rogoway | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699

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