One company, two downtown Class A towers, and a single project that moved Aravo Solutions from 88 Kearny Street into a WeWork suite at 580 California Street, cleared what was left, stored a set of desks, and shipped selected items to Texas. Here is how it was run.
By Pablo Giordano, Owner, Ontrack Moving® • June 2026 • 9 min read
Aravo Solutions was relocating its San Francisco office from the 12th floor of 88 Kearny Street into a WeWork suite at 580 California Street, and the job was bigger than a move. Ontrack Moving® relocated what was going to the new suite, decommissioned what the company was leaving behind, held a set of desks in storage, and shipped selected items to Texas, all run as one coordinated project across two Class A towers.
In short: in 2026, Ontrack Moving® moved Aravo Solutions out of the 12th floor of 88 Kearny Street and into WeWork Suite 1925 at 580 California Street in San Francisco. In the same project, the crew broke down and cleared what the company was not taking and recycled it responsibly, palletized and soft-crated a set of desks into warehouse storage, and shipped selected items to Texas. Electronics were routed as e-waste through legal disposal channels, with certificates of destruction provided for the hard drives where required. It ran after hours and over a weekend so the business stayed up during the workweek, used reusable crates, protected the walls and floors at both Class A towers under a $10,000,000 Combined Protection Tower, and was coordinated with an SFMTA permit at each building.
On a move of this class, preparation and experience are half the battle. For projects like this, see our Bay Area commercial movers, San Francisco office movers, and office relocation playbook.
Aravo Solutions was moving its office out of the 12th floor of 88 Kearny Street and into a WeWork suite, Suite 1925, inside 580 California Street, two downtown San Francisco Class A towers a few blocks apart in the Financial District. Downtown access is tight at the best of times, and here it had to be solved at two separate buildings, each with its own rules, elevator schedule, and loading window, and one of them a coworking operator with protocols of its own.
On top of the move itself, Aravo was not taking everything with it. A share of the furniture and contents was being retired with the old space, a set of desks needed to go into storage rather than to the new suite, and selected items were bound for Texas. That meant the project was really several jobs at once: a relocation of what was going to the new WeWork suite, a decommission of what was not, warehouse storage of the desks, and a shipment out of state, all on a schedule that kept the business open during the workweek.
"In a commercial move, planning and preparation is half the battle."
Pablo Giordano, Owner, Ontrack Moving®
Anyone can rent a truck. On a downtown Class A building move, the job is won or lost before the first crate is carried, in the planning and preparation that goes into it. It started, as every job of this size should, with a walk of both buildings to map what was moving, what was being cleared, what was going to storage, what was bound for Texas, what each landlord would require, and the order the work had to follow.
That groundwork is the difference between a move the buildings barely notice and one that stalls in a loading dock. Knowing what a Class A landlord and a coworking operator will demand, arranging the SFMTA parking permits at each tower, bringing the right carts and crates for the route, setting the right number of movers against what the freight elevator could actually cycle, and sequencing the work in phases is the half of the battle that happens before moving day. The trucks are the easy part once that is done right.
Part of that preparation is mapping the new space and labeling to it. Before move day, the layout of the WeWork suite at 580 California Street was worked out and a labeling system was set, so crates, furniture components, and equipment were tagged to the area they belonged in. A clear office layout and labeling plan is what keeps a commercial move on track and efficient: the crew can route items to the correct location based on the labels instead of staging everything in one pile and sorting it out later, and the client can see where things are going before anything is loaded. On a phased after-hours move, that labeling is also what lets the work pick up cleanly from one shift to the next.
A project this size is planned on the ground, not on paper. On the survey date the move was scoped in person, walking both buildings to see exactly what was going to the new suite, what was being retired, what was going to storage, and what was bound for Texas. Aravo's representative was out of state, so the company was not in the room. With the company's permission, Ontrack Moving® met with 580 California Street building management on Aravo's behalf, representing the tenant in the coordination and preparing for the building's strict protection requirements before the move.
The most useful part of the survey was the path. Building management walked the routes the crew would actually use, from the loading area through the freight elevator to the suite, so the plan could be built around the real distances and chokepoints rather than a floor plan. Seeing those pathways firsthand is what set the manpower, the equipment, and the wall and floor protection the job would require: how many movers the elevator throughput could keep busy, which dollies and crates fit the route, and exactly which corridors, door frames, and elevator interiors needed protection at each tower.
Before the main transport happened, the crew ran a preparation day during regular business hours. They took down the wall-mounted TVs and the wall-attached cabinets, and broke the cubicle systems and workstations down into manageable components. Getting the disassembly done ahead of time meant the after-hours and weekend window could be spent on what it is best used for, which is moving, not unbolting fixtures off the wall while the clock runs on a reserved elevator.
For the contents that were moving, the project used reusable E-crates rather than cardboard cartons. The crates were delivered to the office ahead of the move so staff could pack their own desks and materials, then rolled out on dollies, transported, and picked up after everything was in place at the new WeWork suite.
Reusable crates stack squarely on dollies, so a crew moves more per elevator trip and stages faster at both ends. They also leave almost no packing waste behind, which matters on a job that already includes clearing and recycling the old space. On an office relocation, that combination usually beats buying, building, and then disposing of hundreds of cardboard boxes.
Not everything Aravo kept was going straight to the new suite. A set of desks was palletized, soft-crated, and shrink-wrapped, then held in Ontrack Moving®'s warehouse storage rather than crowding the WeWork suite on day one. Storing furniture on pallets keeps it grouped, off the ground, and easy to retrieve later, and the items can be brought back on a will-call basis when the company is ready for them.
Selected items were bound out of state, to Texas. Because Ontrack Moving® is an asset-based carrier, the same company that ran the local move handled the onward shipment, so Aravo dealt with one accountable carrier across the local relocation, the storage, and the Texas leg rather than handing the long-distance portion to a broker. Keeping the move, the storage, and the shipment under one roof kept the sequencing clean and the handoffs simple.
A decommission is not finished when the furniture is off the floor. What leaves the building still has to go somewhere, and for an office that means two things handled with care: the bulk contents and the electronics. The cleared furniture and materials were recycled responsibly rather than simply hauled off, and the electronics were treated as e-waste and routed through legal disposal channels.
The part that matters most to a business is the data. Computers and the hard drives inside them carry company information, so they cannot be tossed in with general recycling. For the data-bearing devices on this job, certificates of destruction were provided for the hard drives where Aravo required documented proof. Handling the e-waste and that documentation inside the same decommission kept it with one carrier, rather than splitting the data risk across an outside vendor.
Two downtown towers meant two sets of building logistics. Ontrack Moving® coordinated an SFMTA Temporary No Stopping parking permit at each building so the trucks had a legal place to load and unload on busy downtown streets, reserved the freight elevators at both ends, and protected the walls and floors along every path the crew used. Class A buildings expect that protection and a certificate of insurance on file before a crew ever arrives, which is covered in the section below.
Permit placement is not just about legality, it is about distance. At 88 Kearny Street the freight elevator fed down to a garage below street level, so loading meant working items up a ramp to the truck parked at the garage exit. The permit was positioned to put the tail of the truck as close to the top of that walk-up as the street allowed. The shorter the distance between the truck's tail and the door, the less ground the crew covers on every single trip in and out, and across a full day of loading that saved distance adds up to real time.
One honest note from this kind of job: in a high-rise, the freight elevator is the bottleneck. Everything the crew moves has to funnel through that one car, so the elevator's throughput sets the ceiling on how fast the whole job can go, no matter how many movers are working the floor. The crew sets its manpower against what the elevator can actually cycle and works the loading sequence around it, which is exactly why exclusive elevator time is worth pinning down with building management in advance. When a building can only offer shared access, the realistic pace for that day should be planned around it.
On a move like this, after-hours work is not just a courtesy to keep the business running, it is a building rule. Both 88 Kearny Street and 580 California Street required the move to happen after hours and over the weekend, the way most downtown Class A buildings do, to keep freight elevators, lobbies, and loading areas clear of the move during the workday for the other tenants in the tower. Knowing that requirement going in is part of the preparation: the schedule, the manpower, and the permits were all built around an after-hours window from the start rather than reworked when a building turned the crew away during business hours.
So the project was staged across multiple days, with the disassembly handled during business hours and the main relocation run after hours and over the weekend, so staff came back to a workspace that was ready rather than a workweek of downtime. This is the same phased thinking laid out in our office relocation playbook and the protocol breakdown on the commercial moving hub.
A two-tower move touches elevators, lobbies, corridors, floors, door frames, and shared loading areas at both buildings. On a move of this class, the high level of building protection is not optional, it is what the towers require. Ontrack Moving® carried its $10,000,000 Combined Protection Tower for building and property liability across the project, which is what satisfies a Class A landlord's certificate-of-insurance requirement and covers the premises and structures the crew works in and around. The contents themselves are covered separately under standard $0.60 per pound per article cargo liability under federal FMCSA rules, with additional valuation protection available for purchase.
Corporate tenants do not take a mover's insurance on faith. On a project this size, the certificate of insurance, the liability limits, and the carrier's credentials are reviewed in detail before any crew is allowed on site. An asset-based carrier with a real $10,000,000 building and property liability tower, standard $0.60 per pound per article cargo liability, and a clean 0% federal Out-of-Service record is built to stand up to that kind of enterprise due diligence.
Both 88 Kearny Street and 580 California Street are managed by Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL). At 88 Kearny Street, the certificate Ontrack Moving® filed named LC 88k Holdings, LLC and JLL as additional insureds; at 580 California Street, it named I&G Direct Real Estate 43, LP, J.P. Morgan Investment Management, Inc., and JLL. Each building required that certificate with a waiver of subrogation, plus a signed indemnity agreement, before the crew was cleared to work. Ontrack Moving® met those requirements at both towers on Aravo's behalf, since the company's representative was out of state, which meant the certificates, the additional-insured endorsements, and the building paperwork were handled before move day rather than discovered on it.
| Coverage | What it applies to |
|---|---|
| $10M Combined Protection Tower | Buildings, premises, lobbies, floors, elevators, and shared loading areas at both towers; general liability and workers compensation for the work performed. This is what a Class A building names on the COI. |
| $0.60/lb cargo liability | The furniture, equipment, and items themselves, per article, under the federal FMCSA minimum. Additional valuation protection available for purchase. |
| 0% Out-of-Service Rate | The federal safety record under FMCSA inspection, verifiable under USDOT #2551548. |
Aravo Solutions was relocated into its WeWork suite at 580 California Street, the old space on the 12th floor of 88 Kearny Street was broken down and cleared, its contents were recycled responsibly, a set of desks went into palletized storage, and selected items were shipped to Texas, all under one project and one carrier. The electronics were handled as e-waste with certificates of destruction provided for the hard drives, the disassembly was done ahead on a preparation day, and the move ran after hours and over the weekend so the business kept operating. The hard part was solved in the preparation, and the move itself ran as planned.
It is the kind of project that shows the value of an asset-based carrier that can deliver the whole solution: the move, the decommission, the recycling, the storage, the out-of-state shipment, and the e-waste handling, planned together rather than bolted on. If your organization is planning a downtown office move, a relocation into a coworking suite, a building-to-building move, or a decommission of a space you are leaving, our commercial moving and San Francisco commercial movers team can scope it with an on-site walkthrough.
Downtown high-rise relocations, coworking and building-to-building office moves, and decommissioning across San Francisco and the Bay Area, run by our own in-house crews. Asset-based direct carrier under USDOT #2551548. $10M Combined Protection Tower for building and property liability.
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