Workbench, a new four-story mass-timber office building at 2422 E. Seventh Street in East Austin, is officially open for business. The four-story project leans into a workshop vibe, pairing exposed cross-laminated and glue-laminated timber with polished concrete floors and plenty of daylight. A roster of local architecture, engineering, and construction firms helped bring the building to life and will occupy a large share of the space.
Delivery, size and partners
As reported by Austin Business Journal, Workbench totals roughly 50,000 square feet and delivered this spring under an ownership model that puts several tenants on the equity side. The project's general contractor notes that prefabricated mass timber helped speed construction, and Timberlab supplied the cross-laminated and glulam components, according to Swinerton. Developers and brokers say the property blends traditional office suites, a lighting showroom and street-level retail to keep the prominent corner site active throughout the day.
Mass timber and the carbon case
Marketing materials for Workbench lean heavily on the climate argument for wood construction. Developers estimate the timber in the building stores about 500 metric tons of carbon, and that choosing mass timber over a conventional concrete-and-steel structure avoided roughly 1,070 metric tons of CO2. The listing also highlights the sheer volume of material involved, describing hundreds of thousands of board feet of engineered lumber as part of the building’s sustainability story. Those figures are a key part of the pitch to tenants that want lower-carbon, naturally lit workplaces.
Tenants, ownership and a women-led tilt
Workbench was conceived as a collaborative base camp for firms that design and build Austin. Tenant-owners include Dick Clark + Associates, Fort Structures, Beck-Reit, Legacy Lighting and Art + Artisans, among others. Beck-Reit’s project page and leasing materials state that the building is roughly three-quarters pre-leased and that about two-thirds of the occupant firms are women-led, a deliberate emphasis that developers spotlight. They say the ownership and tenant mix creates a kind of one-stop hub where architects, engineers, contractors and brokers can workshop deals and projects under the same roof.
What this means for East Austin
Workbench’s debut adds one more signal that East Austin remains a magnet for office, retail and creative space as growth continues to push east of I-35. The building’s proximity to new apartments, restaurants and bike lanes is front and center in the leasing pitch for small AEC teams looking for short commutes and walkable streets, according to Austin Business Journal. For developers and contractors, clustering so many local trades in a single building is also a bet on a steady pipeline of public and private work across the city.
Leasing and next steps
Brokers are marketing a top-floor suite of about 6,682 rentable square feet and touting flexible lease terms aimed at small, project-focused teams. For floor plans, photos and leasing contacts, interested parties can check the developer and leasing pages for the Workbench project, per Beck-Reit Commercial Real Estate.
