[NYguy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/n...-building.html

Facebook Bets Big on Future of N.Y.C., and Offices, With New Lease
Despite the pandemic, the social media giant leased all the office space in the former main post office at Penn Station in Midtown.





By Matthew Haag
Aug. 3, 2020

Facebook on Monday agreed to lease all the office space in the mammoth 107-year-old James A. Farley Building in Midtown Manhattan, cementing New York City as a growing global technology hub and reaffirming a major corporation’s commitment to an office-centric urban culture despite the pandemic.

With the 730,000-square-foot lease, Facebook has acquired more than 2.2 million square feet of office space in the city for thousands of employees in less than a year, all of it on Manhattan’s West Side between Pennsylvania Station and the Hudson River.

Apple, Amazon and Google all lease space in the same area, an emerging tech corridor.

The timing of the deal’s announcement was somewhat of a surprise because Facebook, which had expressed interest in the Farley Building for months, has given most of its employees the option of working from home during the pandemic. Even after the pandemic subsides, Facebook has said that within the next 10 years up to half of its roughly 52,200 employees across the country would work from home.

Much of Manhattan’s business district remains a virtual ghost town with only a small fraction of workers filling office towers.

But Facebook has more than 4,000 employees in its offices in Manhattan now, up from about 2,900 employees at the beginning of the year.

The company’s new office spaces in Manhattan, at the Farley Building and further west at Hudson Yards, could allow Facebook to move another 8,500 workers to the city. The deal at Hudson Yards, signed late last year, includes 1.5 million square feet in three buildings.