Facebook's Seattle office is moving into a new building after signing a lease in February. And now a Facebook spokesman has confirmed some top-of-the-line amenities for employees that include a rooftop park, walking trails, and even a giant fire pit area.
Located on Dexter Avenue, the 274,000 square feet space in the Dexter Station office building will be designed by Frank Gehry, the architect who previously worked on the company's California headquarters as well as the EMP Museum in Seattle.
The space has enough room for 2,000 employees, as the company plans to make the move from its six-floor, 100,000-square-foot space at the Metropolitan Park complex to the new building sometime in early 2016.
And now we are finally learning more details about the swanky space that shows the company is dedicated to making a pleasant work environment for its employees.
According to planning documents obtained by GeekWire, the new Seattle office will feature a top of the line outdoor space for when employees need to get up from their desk to take a good stretch—or stroll—to boost their creative juices. The office will have not one, but three rooftop areas will be built on a series of balconies located on the 7th floor. The outdoor space will include local trees and plants, a "meeting terrace," and a barbecue area complete with a fire pit for roasting marshmallows on a cold winter day. And since Seattle is known for its rainy weather, the rooftop will also include a covered dinning terrace so workers can still enjoy their meals in the fresh air.
It should come as no shock that Gehry would include these outdoor spaces in his designs, since he made sure to include a nine-acre room that has a half-mile walking loop in Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.
Inside the building, the new Facebook office will feature stadium seating for its larger meetings.
Making sure the office is top-notch signifies how important it is for Facebook to grow outside of Silicon Valley to make its presence felt in the larger Pacific Northwest. When Facebook first opened its Seattle office in 2010, it only had two employees. It's workers then expanded to 90 that year, whereas there are now 500 employees as of the February announcement of the move.
Google also has plans to expand the size of its office space in Kirkland, an upscale Seattle suburb, with other tech companies such as Apple and Nest Labs also opening new office spaces outside of Silicon Valley.
Source: GeekWire
