News: Facebook starts work on Gehry-designed West Campus

**Aggregator** · 10-11-2013, 09:38 PM

10-11-2013 08:19 PM

Facebook starts work on Gehry-designed West Campus

Tourists take photos of the Facebook Inc. 'like' logo displayed on a sign at the entrance to company headquarters in Menlo Park. Facebook is moving ahead with construction on its West Campus expansion.

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.