Facebook starts work on Gehry-designed West Campus
- Nathan Donato-Weinstein
- Real Estate Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal
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Facebook Inc. doesn't intend to dilly dally when it
comes to building its new West Campus in Menlo Park.
The social media juggernaut this week pulled permits for critical
pile-driving work, according to city records. The activity follows demolition
and grading permits that were "finaled" in the past several weeks. Facebook has
now demolished the existing structures on the site and graded the 22-acre
parcel.
The moves suggest Facebook wants
to go vertical soon on the highly anticipated 430,000-square-foot project. The
next step would be for the building's foundation and utilities, and city records
show Facebook is in "plan check" for those permits. But you won't see structural
steel erected until Facebook moves on the core and shell permit. Facebook has
yet to submit for that one, Rachel Grossman, Menlo Park
associate planner, told me. Level 10 Construction is the general contractor.
Designed by Frank Gehry, the project
consists of an enormous single room on pylons over parking, zigging and zagging
along the edges. Perhaps the most eye-popping feature is a large rooftop park
with hundreds of trees.
The West Campus project has the
potential to dramatically raise Menlo Park's profile, said Fran Dehn, the executive director
of the Menlo Park Chamber of Commerce, which strongly supported approval of the
Facebook expansion.
"To have a world-renowned architect designing something here is going to give
the city a different presence," she said. "It's such a departure in architecture
and expectation. We're really privileged to have it."She said the economic impact of having Facebook in the community is already being felt. Facebook moved into its current Menlo Park campus in late 2011 and enlisted the architecture firm Gensler to dramatically rehab the space, creating a kind of Main Street-style environment in what is largely an industrial area.
Nathan Donato-Weinstein covers commercial real estate and transportation for the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
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