It never opened an office there, but Twitter is still being sued for skipping rent payments for space it leased in the San Francisco East Bay area as the company faces mounting legal woes stemming from its aggressive cost-cutting plans.
An affiliate of global investment firm KKR filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco-based tech company, controlled by billionaire Elon Musk, 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. KKR, which owns the property alongside San Francisco developer TMG Partners, filed the complaint with the Alameda Superior Court earlier this month.
Twitter is accused of having missed rent payments since November, according to the complaint. That is right around the time Musk closed his $44 billion deal to purchase the social media giant 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.
The Oakland lawsuit extends a string of recent legal challenges landlords are pursuing over Twitter's alleged refusal to pay rent for office space it leases around the world. Shorenstein Properties, the owner of Twitter's San Francisco headquarters at 1355 Market St., sued the company earlier this year for millions in unpaid rent while the Crown Estate 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 company originally signed the lease for four floors at the Oakland building in September 2021 as part of its plans to expand its office footprint across the bay from its headquarters. It abandoned those expansion plans less than a year later, officially listing the Oakland space for sublease shortly before Musk's acquisition of the company.
Twitter’s lease for the 1330 Broadway space, for which it is obligated to pay rent until it lands a sublease, runs through March 31, 2029, according to the lawsuit and CoStar data.
Twitter, which no longer has a media-relations department, did not respond to CoStar News' requests for comment. KKR declined to comment on requests for details about the lawsuit or its relationship with Twitter. The New York-based landlord is asking the court for back rent, late fees and prejudgment interest on the amount it says it is owed, according to the complaint, as well as any associated attorneys fees.