San Francisco landlord says Facebook, TikTok looking to expand offices

The largest office landlord in San Francisco said Facebook and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, are looking to expand their operations in the Bay Area. 

“Facebook is looking for 700,000 additional square feet. And ByteDance is searching for approximately 250,000 to 300,000 square feet” Owen Thomas, CEO of Boston Properties, said, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. 

A spokesperson for Facebook told the newspaper they would not comment on rumors.

“We are always evaluating our facilities and real estate needs, but we don’t comment on rumors,” Chloe Meyere said.

The comment from Thomas comes after an earnings call last week in which he reportedly said Facebook was looking to expand to 500,000 square feet in Seattle. 

An expansion would help the San Francisco area, which has been hit hard by the pandemic, the Chronicle noted, with most workers still not back in their offices due to COVID-19. 

“COVID has had the biggest impact on San Francisco of all the markets where we operate. And I think a lot of that has been the technology tenants in some ways, leading the way on work from home and second, the very restrictive COVID mandates that have been put in place. And the lifting of those mandates has lagged all of our other cities, and that’s undoubtedly had an impact on the census data that I mentioned earlier,” Thomas said.

“That all being said, San Francisco remains arguably the technology capital of the world. It’s got the largest cluster of computer science workers certainly in the United States. And we believe in the long-term recovery of the San Francisco market, but I do think it will lag our other markets,” he added.

Apple leased new space in the area over the summer, taking up 700,000 square feet in Sunnyvale, the newspaper noted. 

It is unclear when companies will have full reopenings, as the delta variant pushed many businesses’ fall reopening dates back. 

The Hill has reached out to Facebook and TikTok for comment.