Twitter has been forced leave its Colorado office after a judge ordered the social media giant evicted for several months of missed rent payments, the latest conflict for the company owned by Elon Musk that is accused by landlords of refusing to pay rent for space it leases from San Francisco to London.
The San Francisco-based company will soon be pushed out of its offices in Boulder, Colorado, according to court documents alleging it has failed to meet rent obligations for the 64,000-square-foot space. The eviction ruling is the latest legal woe stemming from aggressive cost-cutting plans Twitter has enacted since the company was acquired in October 2022 by Musk, the CEO of electric-powered cars maker Tesla and founder of rocket producer SpaceX.
The judge's order was filed May 31 and will remain in effect for 49 days.
The eviction order lands less than a month after landlord John Buck Co., a Chicago-based real estate firm, filed a complaint against Twitter, alleging the company hasn't paid rent since February of this year for its office in the Railyards at S'Park mixed-use complex at 3390 Valmont Road in Boulder.
The complaint claims that Twitter is responsible for replenishing its nearly $1 million line of credit for the property if the landlord ever had to draw upon it, which John Buck Co. did in order to meet the company's March rent payment. Twitter is bound to a 10-day requirement in order to refill the funds but failed to do so, according to the complaint.
The landlord then served Twitter with a “demand for compliance or possession” in April, a step that meant the company needed to either vacate the property or replenish the line of credit funds. Twitter did neither, according to the complaint, pushing the property owner to escalate its efforts to evict the company and terminate Twitter's rights to the property.
Twitter, which signed the Boulder lease in March 2020, dismantled its media relations team as part of widespread layoffs that were implemented almost immediately after Musk took over as CEO. The company replied to CoStar News' emailed request for a comment with a poop emoji.
Representatives for John Buck Co. did not immediately respond.
String of Lawsuits
The complaint extends a string of recent legal challenges landlords are pursuing over Twitter's alleged refusal to pay rent.
An affiliate of global investment firm KKR filed a lawsuit in March against the company over nearly $1.3 million in unpaid rent for the 66,000 square feet of space Twitter leases in the 1330 Broadway office building in downtown Oakland, California.
Shorenstein Properties, the owner of Twitter's San Francisco headquarters at 1355 Market St., also sued the company earlier this year for millions in unpaid rent while the Crown Estate, the property manager for the British monarchy, filed a claim against the company in London's High Court in January over similar disputes. Twitter faces additional lawsuits filed by landlords including Columbia Property Trust, which claimed it owes $136,260 in unpaid rent payments for space leased at 650 California St. near the Market Street headquarters.
The lawsuits started piling up right around the time Musk closed his $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter and embarked on a bellicose cost-cutting mission to improve its financial standing, laying off thousands of workers and refusing to pay overdue bills for travel and other expenses.
Twitter is facing lawsuits from other landlords, business partners and former employees claiming the company has failed to pay what they are owed since Musk’s takeover. The Twitter owner is said to have told employees that, if vendors want to get paid, "let them sue," according to an earlier Financial Times report.
Representatives for Musk did not respond to CoStar News' requests to comment.