Facebook signs San Francisco lease for up to 3,000 workers

Stephen Lam | Reuters

Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, U.S., April 18, 2017.

Facebook will lease all of the office space in a skyscraper under construction in downtown San Francisco, a new report says, as the company looks beyond its Silicon Valley home to house its fast-growing workforce.

Facebook has leased 436,000 square feet at 181 Fremont St., which represents the city’s largest office lease in the last three years, the San Francisco Business Times reported. It could house between 2,000 and 3,000 employees, and will be Facebook’s first office in the city, which is about 35 miles north of its Menlo Park headquarters.

The company paid “around $80 per square foot,” or roughly $35 million, to lease the commercial space in the building, which will be the city’s third-tallest when it’s completed later this year, the report said.

Employees of Facebook’s Instagram unit will be among the first to move into the San Francisco skyscraper, the city’s first property in the city, according to the report, which you can read here.

The property is located about a block from Salesforce Tower, the new home of software company Salesforce, which will be the tallest building in San Francisco once it’s finished.

That will put technology companies at the center of the city’s current office construction boom, which is rapidly remaking its skyline.

Facebook said in August it had just over 20,600 employees as of June 30, up more than 40 percent from a year earlier.

In July, Facebook unveiled plans to build a corporate campus on the 56-acre Menlo Science & Technology Park it bought in 2015 near its current headquarters.

An email sent to Facebook seeking comment on the lease wasn’t immediately returned.