In the Midst of Cuts, Meta to Build Urban Village Next to HQ

Despite a multi-billion-dollar cost-cutting effort that has seen Meta downsize its global office footprint and initiate layoffs while its stock price has cratered this year, the social media giant is moving ahead with a mixed-use village it plans to build next to its Menlo Park headquarters in California.

The Menlo Park City Council this month unanimously approved Meta’s new Willow Village development, a project that envisions the transformation of a former industrial park into a walkable urban town center, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News.

Since it first proposed the project in 2020, Meta has enhanced its plan by promising to build 1,730 units of housing, a hotel, a grocery store, a town square and an elevated curving park that will connect with its global headquarters.

According to the newspaper report, the extended negotiations over the mixed-use village resulted in Meta agreeing to increase the number of affordable and market-rate homes built in the village while reducing the amount of office space and Meta Platforms on-site employees that will be occupying the new neighborhood.

While many cities on the Bay Area peninsula are focusing their housing efforts on transit-oriented developments on the Caltrain corridor, Menlo Park, Palo Alto and Mountain View—the heart of Silicon Valley—have opted to put new developments in industrial zone to avoid NIMBY pushback from residential neighborhoods, the Mercury News reported.

However, the added traffic from Willow Village already has at least one City Council member warning that the project inevitably will need to be connected to Menlo Park’s Caltrain station to avoid an influx of vehicular traffic.

“We have community members that will live here in about three years, and they need to have access [to the train station] so it’s not necessary to drive to [Willow Village},” Cecilia Taylor, a council member, told the newspaper.

“Willow Road is only so big,” Taylor added.

According to the report, Meta has estimated that about 20% of the workforce at its Menlo Park HQ and the expanded office campus at the new mixed-use development will live in new housing at Willow Village.

Earlier this month, Meta declined an option to renew leases encompassing 250K SF at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards when they expire in 2024 as part of a reduction in the Facebook parent’s workforce. Meta will vacate its space at 30 and 55 Hudson Yards, two skyscrapers owned by Related Cos. in the massive West Side development, according to a report in Bloomberg.

In July, Meta said it was halting its plans to further build out its space at 50 Hudson Yards, a build out it was expecting to complete next year. The company also offered a small amount of that space for sublease.

In its Q3 earnings report, Meta said it would be taking a $2B write-down reflecting the consolidation of its offices and existing footprint. Earlier this year, the social media giant backed out a deal to add 300K of space at 770 Broadway and vacated offices at 225 Park Ave.