The 59-acre development will offer a self-contained community for employees.
Silicon Valley headquarters have been unquestionably over-the-top with amenities in recent years, including gyms, food courts, day care centers, and mass transit for commuting workers.
However, Facebook tends to blur the line between work-life and home-life even further with its announcement of Willow Campus, a 59-acre mixed-use development intended to combat the housing and infrastructure crisis in Northern California. Willow Campus will occupy land that Facebook currently owns, offering 1,500 residential units (15% of which will be offered below market rates), office space, a grocery store, a pharmacy, and other unspecified outlets that people frequent in their day-to-day lives.
The announcement came in the form of — what else? — a Facebook post containing a video of renderings for the development.
The plan will be submitted to Menlo Park authorities this month, at which time the public submittal will likely reveal how much of this "public" development will interface with the surrounding non-Facebook-involved citizens. In the video above, it’s not made clear what the public/private nature of Willow Campus will be.
Below is a trio of renderings from the video that are so soft in nature that the verge on the watercolor medium.
While Facebook’s announcement may have garnered more attention, Google in March quietly announced a similar undertaking near its Mountain View campus that would include housing for employees but not the public at large.
The companies are no doubt casting these developments in a progressive and socially responsible light, but many can’t help but raise an eyebrow as these two titans of technology expand their reach into brick-and-mortar neighborhoods of their own creation.
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