|
 The on-demand ride service paid $123.5 million for Oakland's
historic Sears building last year and has so far filed building
permits to complete at least $2 million in renovations, according to
BuildZoom, a startup that compiles construction and remodeling
contractor data for homeowners.
Across the bay in San Francisco, Uber has so far initiated $130
million in construction on a bigger office in the Mission Bay
neighborhood, BuildZoom's data shows.
The new building permit data from BuildZoom, provided exclusively to
Reuters, underscores the mammoth growth in Uber's real estate
footprint and associated costs, overshadowing most other tech
startups in San Francisco and Oakland.
Remodeling on the old Sears building will take another year, and the
Mission Bay campus is still two or three years out, so construction
costs will rise. Uber said it was also repairing damage on the
Oakland building caused by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Uber is the most highly valued venture-backed tech firm and has
raised more than $7.4 billion from investors, a war chest that can
help fund real estate purchases.
But its costly expansion in Oakland and San Francisco comes as the
venture capital investing climate cools, with more investors wary
that highly valued startups may not grow into their stratospheric
valuation.
The iconic Oakland building, which opened in 1929 as a department
store, will house between 2,000 and 3,000 Uber employees across
380,000 square feet (35,303 sq. m.).
By comparison, Ask.com, an Oakland-based search engine founded in
the dot-com boom, has 200 employees in a 79,000-square-foot
(7,339-sq.-m.) office it shares with other companies owned by parent
IAC Publishing, spokeswoman Suraya Akbarzad said.
[to top of second column] |
Sungevity, a solar design company that has raised close to $900
million from investors, occupies approximately 68,000 square feet
(6,317 sq. m.) in Oakland, spokesman John Ordona said.
In San Francisco, Uber partnered with a real estate firm to purchase
land for $125 million and develop a 423,000-square-foot
(39,298-sq.-m.) campus that will house between 3,000 and 4,000
employees. That space is in addition to Uber's 500,000-square-foot
(46,452-sq.-m.) headquarters in downtown San Francisco, according to
BuildZoom.
Other highly valued, fast-growing tech companies don't come close.
Lyft said it has 66,000 square feet (6,132 sq m.)while online
accommodations company Airbnb said it occupies 169,000 square feet
(15,700 sq m.) in San Francisco.
(Reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
