Just last year, San Francisco was ecstatic over news that software giant Salesforce would build a its 14-acre headquarters in the City's Mission Bay. Then in January, the city popped champagne over an announcement that Salesforce had inked another deal for offices downtown.
Now it seems the celebration may have been devastatingly premature.
On Monday, Salesforce announced that the company would be putting plans for its Mission Bay headquarters on an indefinite hold.
"It is clear to us that our original Mission Bay strategy may not provide enough space and flexibility for our needs," said Salesforce to the Examiner. "This means we are suspending development on our Mission Bay campus and instead focusing on further expansion of our downtown San Francisco campus."
According to the Examiner, Salesforce has added 500 employees in the past year. And over the next few years, the company plans to add about 2,000 employees to its San Francisco offices alone. It seems Salesforce has become too big for its Mission Bay britches.
"We have a great problem, which is that we're growing faster than we anticipated at the time we bought the land," said Salesforce Spokesman Bruce Francis to the San Francisco Chronicle. "We're going to need space sooner than we can build it."
According to the Chronicle, the company is (for now) fortunately planning to stay in San Francisco, instead taking over more office space downtown until a plan of action is determined.
While the staggering expansion is good news for Salesforce, it's more than a little disappointing for the City.
The suspension of the Mission Bay project means that hundreds of construction workers, architects and designers will not begin working, as expected -- a fatal blow to a plan that would have infused hundreds of jobs into San Francisco.
Equally heartbreaking is the potential abandonment of the Mission Bay campus. The Huffington Post reported on what spoils Salesforce had in store for the land:
The 14-acre property (right near the ballpark) is set to include four separate buildings with two million square-feet of offices, retail spaces, plazas, restaurants, childcare, parking and an enormous outdoor television screen to broadcast public programming.
Unlike other business campuses, the Salesforce headquarters will be open to the neighborhood, allowing residents to access the businesses, public space and childcare, supplying a major source of revenue for the area.
Now, the 14-acre plot will remain just another fenced off and abandoned stretch of land in a forgotten corner of the City.
Salesforce told the Chronicle that no decisions have been made regarding the Mission Bay land.
Check out what could have been (or could still be?) in our slideshow of renderings by architecture firm Legorreta and Legorreta below:
