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Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

sfchronicle.com

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Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#51
post #7

I mentioned this to someone, but Salesforce had already publicly disclosed at least 714,000 square feet in 2014 for the (now) Salesforce Tower with rumors they'd already expanded another 200k [1]. I don't think it's a particularly meaningful number either way, as what matters (if any of it does) is total square footage in the city not in a single building / lease. [1] https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/201…

Exactly - isn't Salesforce's deal bigger?

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#52
> File-sharing giant Dropbox has signed the biggest lease in San Francisco history, an agreement for 736,000 square feet, the entirety of a new office complex under construction in the southwest corner of Mission Bay. [...] The space will represent an expansion for Dropbox, which occupies 182,000 square feet at 333 Brannan St., a building Kilroy also owns, as well as 115,000 square feet at 345 Brannan. Dropbox currently has about 1,500 employees and 102 job openings in San Francisco, according to its website.

So, they currently have ~300k square feet. They are expanding to a space with 736k square feet. And they have 102 job openings posted, which they were all filled would expand their workforce by less than 10%. What exactly do they need all this new space for? Even if they have huge plans to somehow expand their filesharing business, doubling their workforce at this point seems quite optimistic.

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#53

Naive question, but why would large companies favor leasing instead of just outright purchasing the property? It seems that when the terms of the lease are up, the leasing company has almost unlimited leverage in the next negotiation (unless the tenant company doesn't mind relocating all of its employees).

I'm sure a lot of them would if they could afford it.

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#54

This is just a file sync. A good one. But 1500 employees for that? This goes way beyond my imagination.

There’s a ton of stuff around that though. Tens of thousands of paying customers need support. Credit card teams. Data center guys. Guys to right deployment tools. Security guys to monitor the credit card system. Hacking together a proof of concept is simple, running a big business is complicated.

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#55

> File-sharing giant Dropbox has signed the biggest lease in San Francisco history, an agreement for 736,000 square feet, the entirety of a new office complex under construction in the southwest corner of Mission Bay. [...] The space will represent an expansion for Dropbox, which occupies 182,000 square feet at 333 Brannan St., a building Kilroy also owns, as well as 115,000 square feet at 345 Brannan. Dropbox curren…

Servers?

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#57
post #23
post #5

It's exciting to think ahead to what that part of Mission Bay and Potrero might feel like someday when the train tracks are put in an underground tunnel (for Caltrain and high-speed rail to the Transbay Center) and I-280 is turned into a surface-level boulevard (like Octavia).

> I-280 is turned into a surface-level boulevard (like Octavia). You meant a parking lot, didn't you ? :D

It’s a highway in California. It’s implied.

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#58

Naive question, but why would large companies favor leasing instead of just outright purchasing the property? It seems that when the terms of the lease are up, the leasing company has almost unlimited leverage in the next negotiation (unless the tenant company doesn't mind relocating all of its employees).

1) managing an office building is a lot of hassle.

2) startups are always growing or shrinking. no point putting so much significant capital unless it is an established in for a long haul at a location where talent is surplus.

3) if you indeed have that much capital, you can pretty much dictate what you want and get some tax benefits (amazon, second HQ) or work with a city build a new building suitable for your long-term needs (apple).

4) not much inventory that meets your needs in SF market because the property prices are always going up.

5) the leasing company actually has limited leverage. finding another tenant esp. the size of dropbox is not easy. you can bin pack other tenants but you lose lot of money until all new tenants move in.

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#59

> File-sharing giant Dropbox has signed the biggest lease in San Francisco history, an agreement for 736,000 square feet, the entirety of a new office complex under construction in the southwest corner of Mission Bay. [...] The space will represent an expansion for Dropbox, which occupies 182,000 square feet at 333 Brannan St., a building Kilroy also owns, as well as 115,000 square feet at 345 Brannan. Dropbox curren…

Servers?

There's certainly cheaper places to house servers. They were probably a big cramped already, and expecting to need that space as they hire more (they aren't limited to their current job listings).

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#60

This is tangential, and I'm not a designer so this is just one dev's opinion, but I found Dropbox's latest rebrand (dropbox.design) to be a bizarre departure for them. It was so off the wall I just assumed it was some sort of parody site until I realized it was official. I'm in no place to determine if it's "good" or "bad", but it's certainly an...interesting direction, if nothing else.

For my taste dropbox.design is borderline ugly. It is definitely not pretty. The colors look like they were picked in MS Paint.

https://www.dropbox.com is in the same style and I find it looks very unprofessional, even if it is targeted to regular users. It looks like an art gallery? https://www.dropbox.com/business on the other hand looks clean and trustworthy.

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