New Cover Near for Facebook

Stanford Research Park is a 700-acre, 10-million-square-foot development on land owned by, and adjacent to, Stanford University. The park is home to 162 buildings housing approximately 150 companies that are predominantly scientific, technical and research oriented.

Facebook's soon-to-be new home base is a former Hewlett-Packard building that later housed HP-spinoff Agilent. Located at 1601 California Ave., the property is slated for eventual conversion to housing under a 2005 agreement between the city and Stanford University. A leasing flyer for the building last year, when the lease was signed, said it could be leased through mid-2013. The triple-net asking lease rate was $1.25 per square-foot per month. Doug Beck, Jim Fletcher and Matt Germino represented Stanford University in the transaction.

The company may ultimately decide to maintain some Downtown office space to cover any overflow, a Facebook spokesperson told Globest.com last summer. The company on Tuesday did not immediately respond for an update of that situation. Some of the company's leaseholds include space at 164 and 285 Hamilton Ave., 156 and 151 University Ave., and 500 Emerson St. Ownership information was not immediately available.

"While the new building is large enough to hold all of our current employees, it may not be adequate to keep all of us together until we find a permanent headquarters," the spokesperson said. "To prepare for this contingency, we expect to retain some of our current space in downtown Palo Alto as well."

Facebook is a five-year-old social networking website with more than 200 million users worldwide. The move "positions us well to continue looking for a long term campus solution while also allowing employees to work together as much as possible," the spokesperson said.