Facebook setting up in Fremont.
Company leases buildings in Ardenwood area
FREMONT » Facebook, embarking on a major expansion of its Bay Area operations and its first foray into Fremont, has leased two big office buildings in Fremont’s Ardenwood district with room enough for hundreds of workers.
The tech titan has leased a total of 190,000 square feet in the East Bay city, Alameda County property records and property brochures show. People familiar with the transactions also confirmed Thursday that Facebook has signed leases for the expansion.
The buildings have enough space for the social networking giant to move in around 950 Facebook employees, based on typical ratios of employees and office space.
The Fremont buildings are near the eastern end of the Dumbarton Bridge. Much of the tech company’s previously announced expansion on the Penin- sula is in Menlo Park, at the western end of the same bridge.
Facebook leased the two buildings from The Sobrato Organization, county files show. One building that Facebook leased totals 100,000 square feet at 6530 Paseo Padre Parkway. The other building totals 90,000 square feet at 6422 Commerce Drive.
“This is great news,” Kelly Kline, Fremont’s economic development director, said Thursday. “This is the first Facebook operation in Fremont.”
Through a spokesman,
Facebook said it had no comment about the situation.
“This makes a lot of sense for Facebook,” Kline said. “Anecdotally, we know that this location is close to a big chunk of Facebook’s workforce and just a few minutes from their headquarters.”
Facebook has rapidly expanded its Bay Area operations in recent years.
In July, Facebook revealed plans for a vast expansion of its presence in Menlo Park, where it has its headquarters.
The new Willow Campus in Menlo Park would include several office buildings, hundreds of homes, retail, a grocery store, and parks and plazas.
At the Willow Campus, Facebook intends to develop 1.75 million square feet of offices, 1,500 housing units, 125,000 square feet of retail space including a pharmacy, and a cultural and visitor center. As many as 8,700 Facebook employees could work at the Willow Campus offices.
When Facebook unveiled the Willow Campus plan, it said it hoped to spur a revival of transit and transportation upgrades, including greater use of the Dumbarton transit corridor, potentially running shuttle buses across the Bay that could connect to BART.
As for its Fremont plans, Facebook indicated in the Alameda County documents that it had no immediate intention to purchase the two buildings that it is leasing, but the wording did leave the door open for a possible purchase at some point.
Chase Lyman, vice president of leasing and acquisitions with Sobrato, would not comment on any transaction at the project. Lyman said Sobrato no longer has any of its buildings in Fremont’s Ardenwood district available for lease.
Earlier this year, Palo Alto- based Tesla leased two buildings in Fremont’s Ardenwood area a short distance from Facebook’s future Fremont operations. Tesla is undertaking a major renovation of the buildings, which total 235,000 square feet.
Fremont officials believe more tech firms could be enticed by Ardenwood.
“We positioned Ardenwood to be more able to attract tech-related businesses,” Kline said. “Those strategies appear to be paying off.”