They are in a unique position that they aren’t actually locked into their long term leases but once they start breaking them they won’t be able to get more leases on those terms so it’s in their best interest to get as many as possible then use the option to wipe away the bad ones
I’m on mobile so I can’t find the article but basically each lease is held by a barely capitalized independent entity. If WeWork wanted to close down a specific site they could merely shut down that specific entity without incurring obligations/fines/penalties to the entity of WeWork.
Normal these sorts of things aren’t allowed and building owners won’t sign up for that but somehow WeWork was able to bamboozle a bunch of developers into agreeing to that.
