Big S.F. office deal as Square expands HQ
Mobile payments company Square Inc. signed a lease to expand its San Francisco headquarters by 28 percent in one of the city’s largest office deals this year.
The company took an additional 104,135 square feet in the second quarter and now occupies a total of 469,056 square feet at 1455 Market St., said building owner Hudson Pacific Properties. The new Mid-Market space has room for over 500 employees. Square currently has more than 2,300 employees, according to Bloomberg data. The lease runs through September 2023.
San Francisco’s office market is one of the tightest and most expensive in the country,
according to brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. The city’s vacancy rate fell by 0.1 percentage point to 7.4 percent in the second quarter. Annual asking rent rose 90 cents to $72.30 per square foot, said Cushman & Wakefield, which is the leasing agent at 1455 Market St.
“Already standout West Coast market fundamentals continued to improve” in the second quarter, Victor Coleman, CEO of Hudson Pacific Properties, said in a statement.
Almost all of San Francisco’s new office towers are fully leased, prompting fast-growing tech companies to expand in their existing buildings and through sublease deals with other tenants.
Earlier this year, Google expanded in the Hills Plaza complex, along the Embarcadero near the Bay Bridge, where it already has a large presence, and sources said the search giant is on the hunt for more space.
Square moved into the former Bank of America data center in 2013. The company went public the following year. The building is also Uber’s headquarters and is a block from 1355 Market St., the headquarters of Twitter. Square CEO Jack Dorsey is also CEO of Twitter.
Square declined to comment. On Wednesday, Square reported second-quarter revenue of $385.4 million, beating analyst expectations, according to Bloomberg. But its earnings forecast of 8 to 10 cents per share in the third quarter fell short of forecasts, sending its stock down more than 1 percent in after-hours trading.