Columbus, Ohio’s Short North District, a hub of retail and commerce, has become a prime target for new development. So roughly a year ago, when local real estate developer Brent Crawford began looking for tenants for his forthcoming 800 North High development, a $45 million mixed-use project in the Short North, it made sense to reach out to the fast-growing coworking giant WeWork. Eventually, his firm Crawford Hoying signed a lease with the startup, with plans to turn 30 percent of the building over to flexible office space.

Now that the project is on the verge of opening, how does he feel after WeWork’s implosion over the last few months?

“We couldn’t be happier,” he tells Curbed. “We’re in a far better position than we were a year ago.”

Crawford’s logic goes as follows: He owns a brand-new building in a great location, as well as easily convertible coworking space WeWork spent roughly $1.1 million upgrading (what he calls “the best finished office spaces in Ohio”). Crawford’s firm also has a letter of credit from WeWork guaranteeing lease payments for a fixed amount of time. Crawford wouldn’t elaborate further on details, but said “If they left, they wouldn’t hurt our feelings.” That stance may, in part, be due to the fact that in the weeks after the WeWork news first hit, three other coworking companies called, asking him to “let them know if anything happens.”

“We were never concerned, because of Softbank,” he says, in reference to the bank and venture capital fund that recently invested billions of dollars to bail out the coworking giant. “They had so much invested, we expected them to give them a cash infusion.”

WeWork’s pipeline problem

The fallout from WeWork’s spectacular devaluation, from $48 billion to roughly $7 billion in the space of weeks, will have a significant ripple effect. But while the saga of Adam Neumann’s mismanagement and pre-IPO financial statements have led to reckonings around venture capital and investments, the real estate and coworking industries have varying degrees of exposure⁠—some even say opportunity⁠—that will come into clearer focus over the coming months.