Facebook Tracker: East, West And Everything In Between

Facebook is getting big, and we don’t just mean popular: the social media giant has gotten bigger than its britches in more places than one, with new offices cropping up across the U.S. and old ones growing larger to accommodate its swelling workforce ranks. Here are five locations to watch for activity in the near future.

Chicago, Illinois

This week, Facebook announced it is increasing its office space in Chicago. The company first moved in to a half-floor last year and has since taken over the 28th floor of a 37-story office tower on Wacker Drive, The Chicago Tribune reported. Apparently, its new lease is for three entire floors on the 20th, 21st and 22nd floors — enough room for more than 500 employees.

Some were surprised to see a tech company taking up residence in a building that is otherwise occupied by the likes of real estate and law firms. Google, for instance, has its Midwest headquarters in the former Fulton Market Cold Storage building. However, one critic noted that development in the city was moving west, so Facebook’s new offices may soon be in a more central location — once again making the social media giant a trendsetter.

Henrico County, Virginia

Last week, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe announced that Facebook would be building its next data center in Henrico County, just outside of Richmond, to the tune of $1 billion — $750 million for construction and $250 million for solar facilities to power the data center.

Facebook said that the ability to source clean, renewable energy was a critical factor in the selection of Henrico County. The investment is projected to create 100 full-time jobs. Facebook will receive around $19 million in state tax exemptions through 2035, CNN Tech reported.

Announcing the decision, McAuliffe said, “Working with companies like Facebook and many others, we are advancing Virginia’s position as a global leader in the technology economy.”

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Building upon its Boston-area staff, Facebook plans to open a new office in neighboring Cambridge next year. The current team is more than 100 strong and has outgrown its small Kendall Square office, according to news from The Boston Globe; the expansion will accommodate all of them comfortably, plus 500 more.

The space will be dedicated largely to the company’s machine learning research projects, said the Globe, and will be a space where experts from the surrounding community and nearby universities can collaborate with the social media giant to save the world, or at least provide internet access to those 4 billion poor souls currently living without it.

Facebook, of course, has its roots in Boston, where founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was attending Harvard University for psychology before building the social network and dropping out. The new offices will be located on the top three floors at 100 Binney St. and will make Facebook one of the largest employers in Cambridge, according to City Councilor Nadeem Mazen.

San Francisco, California

Facebook’s headquarters are moving from Menlo Park, California to a brand new, 70-story, not-even-completed-yet skyscraper in neighboring San Francisco. Once completed, it will be the city’s third-tallest building, with a view of the nearby tallest building in the city: The Salesforce Tower, also under construction.

Facebook is leasing a total of 436,000 square feet of office space at 181 Fremont St. — all of the office space available at that address, enough to hold 2,000 to 3,000 Facebook and Instagram employees over 33 floors. The social media giant said in August that it had more than 20,600 employees.

This is the largest lease the city has seen in three years, CNBC reported.

Menlo Park, California

Meanwhile, the Menlo Science & Technology Park near the company’s current headquarters is being redeveloped into a corporate campus, just two short years after Facebook moved into its 430,000 square foot headquarters on the property. The existing headquarters will be retained, reported Recode; the new campus will be an expansion, not a replacement.

However, this campus isn’t just about building more office space for an ever-growing workforce. The so-called “Willow Campus” is envisioned to be a “mixed-use village” that includes a grocery store, pharmacy, 125,000 square feet of retail space, and 1,500 housing units.

The campus will be open to the public, although it’s too soon to say whether the offices will be used exclusively by Facebook or rented out to other companies as well. The grocery, retail, housing and office portions of the project are slated for completion by 2021.