TECH Facebook is developing its own city near Silicon Valley HQ complete with 1,700 apartments, a supermarket, hotel and new offices

[Melodi]

And as predicted by a number of us here on the forum starting at least five or six years ago - Presto the return of the Company Town 2.0 - note at the end of the article that Google and severe other companies are planning to do the same thing.

Facebook is developing its own city near Silicon Valley HQ

Mark Zuckerberg's social network, which has 2.9 billion users, is now planning to build a real life community called Willow Park on a 59-acre site in Menlo Park, California.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Welcome to Zuckerville! Facebook is developing its own city near Silicon Valley HQ complete with 1,700 apartments, a supermarket, hotel and new offices

• Facebook and Signature Development Group are behind the proposed plans for the new Willow Park city
• It will be built where a single-use industrial and warehouse complex currently stands on a 59-acre site adjacent to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California
• Facebook already owns several of the existing buildings on the site
• It will feature 1,729 apartments, including about 320 that will be affordable housing and up to 120 units designated for senior housing
• The plans for the new city also feature a supermarket, pharmacy, cafes and restaurants and a 193-room hotel
• There will be a town square, multiple parks and a two-acre elevated park similar to New York City's High Line
• Facebook also plans to have 1.25 million square feet of new office, meeting and conference room space for the social media company

By EMILY CRANE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 16:52, 7 July 2021 | UPDATED: 17:06, 7 July 2021


Facebook is expanding its social media empire by developing its own city right next to its Silicon Valley headquarters.
Mark Zuckerberg's social network, which has 2.9 billion users, is now planning to build a real life community called Willow Park on a 59-acre site in Menlo Park, California.

Facebook and Signature Development Group are behind the proposed plans for the new city.
The most recent plans, which were updated in May, show the development will be built where a single-use industrial and warehouse complex currently stands.

Facebook already owns several of the existing buildings on the site.

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Mark Zuckerberg's social network, which has 2.9 billion users, is now planning to build a real life community called Willow Park on a 59-acre site in Menlo Park, California. Pictured above is a rendering from the plans

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The plans for the new city feature feature 1,729 apartments, a supermarket, pharmacy, cafes and restaurants and a 193-room hotel, as well as multiple park public parks and Facebook office space

It will feature 1,729 apartments, including about 320 that will be affordable housing and up to 120 units designated for senior housing.
The city will be built between Belle Haven and East Palo Alto, which is a heavily populated Hispanic neighborhood.
The housing units will not be exclusively for Facebook employees.

A number of the non-affordable housing units, however, will likely be taken up by Facebook employees. The company made headlines several years ago when they started offering staff more money if they lived within 10 miles of the campus.
The plans for the new city also feature a supermarket, pharmacy, cafes and restaurants and a 193-room hotel.
The 200,000 square feet of planned retail space will be built around a 1.5-acre town square.

Separate to the town square will be a four-acre public park, a two-acre elevated park similar to New York City's High Line and other public open spaces.

In addition to the housing and retail spaces, Facebook also plans to have 1.25 million square feet of new office, meeting and conference room space for the social media company.

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It will be built where a single-use industrial and warehouse complex currently stands on a 59-acre site adjacent to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Facebook already owns several of the existing buildings on the site

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Facebook and Signature Development Group are behind the proposed plans for the new city

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There will also be a four-acre public park, a two-acre elevated park similar to New York City's High Line and other public open spaces

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The 200,000 square feet of planned retail space will be built around a 1.5-acre town square
Only Facebook employees will be allowed access to the office spaces.

The new office space will allow Facebook to expand and employee about 3,400 new employees.
Recent renderings show a mostly modernist design for the city, which includes a large glass dome building specifically for Facebook employees.

Facebook first submitted an application for the city back in 2017 to redevelop the former ProLogis Menlo Science and Technology Park.
The company and the developers spent at least two years obtaining public comments about its plans for Willow Park.

Among the main concerns from locals was that the new city would worsen the already heavy traffic in the area and further increase the high ratio of jobs to housing.

Facebook updated its plans late last year to account for these concerns.

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Recent renderings show a mostly modernist design for the city, which includes a large glass dome (pictured on right) building specifically for Facebook employees

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It will feature 1,729 apartments, including about 320 that will be affordable housing and up to 120 units designated for senior housing

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The plans for the new city also feature a supermarket, pharmacy, cafes and restaurants and a 193-room hotel

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Facebook first submitted an application for the city back in 2017 to redevelop the former ProLogis Menlo Science and Technology Park
They reduced the number of employee capacity by 30 percent and added more than 220 homes.
Facebook also agreed to prioritize the construction of the supermarket and other community amenities that can be accessed by non-employees.

The City of Menlo Park is still reviewing the proposal and is preparing an Environmental Impact Report.
Facebook now joins a host of tech companies that are getting involved in construction projects.
Google last year released plans for a San Jose 'city-within-a-city' development that would add 7.3 million square feet of office space and 4,000 homes to the downtown area.

The Google village, named Downtown West, would include shops, restaurants, a hotel, and cultural and entertainment hubs.
It would also potentially act as the campus for 25,000 Google employees.

Google submitted its initial application to the San Jose planning division in October 2019.
Google agreed to work with the city to ensure that 25 percent of the homes would be affordable.

 

[packyderms_wife]

He must be taking notes from the chinese, this is what they have done for their workers. The workers are then paid in an alternate form of currency, I'm sure suckerborg will use crypto, that they can only spend on "campus". The workers are essentially slaves.

 

[Kathy in FL]

And they owed their soul to the company store.

 

[packyderms_wife]

And they owed their soul to the company store.

This^^^

 

[Tex88]

He must be taking notes from the chinese, this is what they have done for their workers. The workers are then paid in an alternate form of currency, I'm sure suckerborg will use crypto, that they can only spend on "campus". The workers are essentially slaves.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joo90ZWrUkU

 

[Raggedyman]

look on the bright side - it makes target acquisition so much simpler when you're trying to tweak that incoming warhead . . .

 

[BornFree]

They should call it communist city. And you can bet the Chinese are involved.

 

[Melodi]

Seriously my only slight surprise in this article is that they are starting by building Company Towns in these highly expensive areas which means for some reason they want their staff to stay there (for now).

I had really expected that more of the Big Tech would move to low-cost, low regulation areas like say Wyoming, Mississippi, or perhaps Kansas or parts of Colorado.

If they wanted a liberal area there is the area around Austin Texas which is probably pretty built up now but still likely to have land in the area to build a brand new town with Facebook/Google/Whatever Hub on it and a Company Town to go with it. Colorado would be harder to put a new city in the more liberal Denver/Boulder area but it might not be impossible to put one on the plains if they made parts of it underground like Montreal or Stockholm.

But I was pretty sure the concept of Company Town was coming along soon because it is such an easy way for a mega-corporation to keep tabs on their employees and control their lives at the same time. And in the big urban areas (especially the stupidly expensive ones) it allows the Company to control the worker housing situation without raising salaries to the point of lunacy.

 

[Mprepared]

Mark Z was in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho for the weekend and people wondering if he is here looking to buy land or something.

 

[Melodi]

Mark Z was in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho for the weekend and people wondering if he is here looking to buy land or something.

OK that would make sense, thank you for sharing that - he's probably looking for locations to build a really big company town and keep the one in Silly Valley for a few executives and tech that he wants to keep there.

 

[packyderms_wife]

Mark Z was in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho for the weekend and people wondering if he is here looking to buy land or something.

Apparently he was looking here in Iowa as well.

 

[Dennis Olson]

It’ll be named “Orwellville.”

 

[Hognutz]

Good all the commies will be in one location, and easily locatable...

 

[Hfcomms]

Totally woke and you will owe your soul to the company store.

 

[Melodi]

Apparently he was looking here in Iowa as well.

I almost mentioned Iowa as another potential area for building Big Company Towns. So it looks like he's on a scouting trip and I suspect they plan on buying more than one.

Especially Amazon (at some point) probably starting near some of the larger (but more rural) warehouses. They already have a lot of workers in Vans, I could see them building "tiny houses" or "apartments" as an incentive to work there.

 

[packyderms_wife]

I almost mentioned Iowa as another potential area for building Big Company Towns. So it looks like he's on a scouting trip and I suspect they plan on buying more than one.

Especially Amazon (at some point) probably starting near some of the larger (but more rural) warehouses. They already have a lot of workers in Vans, I could see them building "tiny houses" or "apartments" as an incentive to work there.

Amazon is a huge employer here in central Iowa.

 

[Double_A]

Why?
To keep 1700 workers off the freeways during commute? A drop in the bucket.
Why not just let the workers stay and work from home.

Dipshit, Zuck must be an idiot savant, brilliant in one area, a f'n idiot with regard to everything else.

Oh well I rarely go up that way...its getting too close to SF and I can feel the negative forces from SF,
this will just double the heebe jeebies I get. I guess I'll still have to drive up there to collect family at SFO airport.

Hwy 280 to Hwy 380 to SFO, bypass 101

Gawd I hate what this area has become.


(Just like I hate spell check, because it incorrectly corrected five words, that I had to correct)

 

[greysage]

Looks like a diverse populace.

 

[Faroe]

Total surveillance too. Even bad thoughts will get picked up.

 

[packyderms_wife]

Why?
To keep 1700 workers off the freeways during commute? A drop in the bucket.
Why not just let the workers stay and work from home.

Dipshit, Zuck must be an idiot savant, brilliant in one area, a f'n idiot with regard to everything else.

Oh well I rarely go up that way...it getting too close to SF and I can feel the negative force from SF,
this will just double the herbed jeebies I get. I guess I'll still have to drive up their to collect family at SFO airport.

Hwy 280 to Hwy 380 to SFO, bypass 101

Gawd I hate what this area has become.

you're looking at it wrong, think of it as 1700 slaves all confined into one area and under your total control, using the guise of so called freedom. That's suckerburgs idea of nirvana or utopia.

 

[Melodi]

Amazon is a huge employer here in central Iowa.

That doesn't surprise me in the least, they tend to go to lower-cost areas when they can get the workforce. They got into big trouble in the United Kingdom which has some humane laws when it comes to worker's rights - an enterprising young reporter for a major newspaper had no problems getting a warehouse job where she worked for a few weeks cheerfully documenting every violation she could find (and a lot of them were severe).

Things like not giving employees enough time between shifts to go home and sleep (so many workers lived in cars in the parking lot), refusing to report on-the-job injuries but did have an ambulance out front at all times (because there were so many injuries). Hours that violated local employment law along with totally unimaginable and impossible amounts of goods sorted and packed.

All sorts of things Amazon could probably get away with in some US States, but not even in the rural UK. That article was like dynamite, the inspectors were in there and Amazon had a lot of explaining to do. Especially about things like employees being told to "pee themselves" and this was before COVID.

I gather the Warehouses in the UK are still no picnic to work for, but workers no longer live in the parking lot and there is better reporting of employee injuries than in the past. Inspectors do visit and employees are reminded they have a right to use the toilet and the peeing themselves isn't a job requirement (per the health inspectors).

In the US, it can kind of be "anything goes" and I think the US warehouse business model is similar for that for meat production plants except they employed retired and other desperate Americans as a first choice over illiterate Mexican Peasants (brought in by the busload, or at least they used to be).

Anyway, own the town, and such abuses are a lot easier to get away with, I'm just saying....and a look at the history of company towns (especially in the US) will show that.

 

[Old Gringo]

delete

 

[Double_A]

you're looking at it wrong, think of it as 1700 slaves all confined into one area and under your total control, using the guise of so called freedom. That's suckerburgs idea of nirvana or utopia.

Whoa, you know if we convinced them to put a "Dome" over it that would really make things easier to accomplish.

Damm, ,just realized Zuck will charge them for the air they breathe

 

[Kathy in FL]

OK that would make sense, thank you for sharing that - he's probably looking for locations to build a really big company town and keep the one in Silly Valley for a few executives and tech that he wants to keep there.

Nope. But part of your scenario works. The Idaho, Montana, etc. locations would be the elites' location, mirroring what a lot of the hollyweird and liberal rich have done. They dirty where they originated because the culture is already there and they don't have to break them before imprisoning them in that lifestyle. Everything is already set up on the left coast. Low personal freedoms, population density, mind numbing entertainment venues, lots of concrete.

Out in the West freedom seems to ooze from the very bedrock. The wild, unruly, untamed locations. That is not the environment to build one of those company housing projects.

 

[Melodi]

Nope. But part of your scenario works. The Idaho, Montana, etc. locations would be the elites' location, mirroring what a lot of the hollyweird and liberal rich have done. They dirty where they originated because the culture is already there and they don't have to break them before imprisoning them in that lifestyle. Everything is already set up on the left coast. Low personal freedoms, population density, mind numbing entertainment venues, lots of concrete.

Out in the West freedom seems to ooze from the very bedrock. The wild, unruly, untamed locations. That is not the environment to build one of those company housing projects.

Yeah I mean I'm not totally sure of the specifics, but I have seen the sorts of places they try to locate their warehouses in over here, and ideally, a full "Company Town" would include really nice digs (even houses with pools and huge yards) for the elites and cheap box apartments or mini-houses for "the workers." Probably even a lot to hook up the RV's, for those that "own" them.

I do know because I have friends that still live in them; that places like The Bay Area or Seattle are so extremely overpriced now that it is becoming hard for even the High-End Tech companies like Microsloth and Girgled to pay enough to keep their most needed employees around.

And by that, I mean the middle to upper-level IT geeks and their families, who tend to leave after a few years when they want to buy a home.

Also, there's the "London" or "Vail" Colorado problem, living there is just too expensive for the lower-level employees needed to keep a place like a big office complex running; like janitors, cooks, on-site nurses, fire-fighters, security guards etc.

At one point Vail Colorado had to build housing for school teachers because they couldn't afford to live there and in London firefighters, police, nurses, and the like are often found living in public housing paying rent tagged to their salaries because otherwise, well they wouldn't be there either.

We have a friend in London who is a security guard and if they took away his nice public sector house, he'd just move to a another city and work there.

 

[Faroe]

Whoa, you know if we convinced them to put a "Dome" over it that would really make things easier to accomplish.

Damm, ,just realized Zuck will charge them for the air they breathe

Whoa, again.
Lived in Fairfield IA for ten years.
Maharashi (Not gonna bother to look up the spelling) had the 'roos enthralled.
Company town? Too much to explain.

 

[mistaken1]

Company town.

Much easier to defend the facespook employees from the white-supremacist menace when the slaves uhh employees are behind barbed wire and pinkertons.

Much like the hotel kalifornia they are free come but they can never leave ....

 

[mistaken1]

That doesn't surprise me in the least, they tend to go to lower-cost areas when they can get the workforce. They got into big trouble in the United Kingdom which has some humane laws when it comes to worker's rights - an enterprising young reporter for a major newspaper had no problems getting a warehouse job where she worked for a few weeks cheerfully documenting every violation she could find (and a lot of them were severe).

Things like not giving employees enough time between shifts to go home and sleep (so many workers lived in cars in the parking lot), refusing to report on-the-job injuries but did have an ambulance out front at all times (because there were so many injuries). Hours that violated local employment law along with totally unimaginable and impossible amounts of goods sorted and packed.

All sorts of things Amazon could probably get away with in some US States, but not even in the rural UK. That article was like dynamite, the inspectors were in there and Amazon had a lot of explaining to do. Especially about things like employees being told to "pee themselves" and this was before COVID.

I gather the Warehouses in the UK are still no picnic to work for, but workers no longer live in the parking lot and there is better reporting of employee injuries than in the past. Inspectors do visit and employees are reminded they have a right to use the toilet and the peeing themselves isn't a job requirement (per the health inspectors).

In the US, it can kind of be "anything goes" and I think the US warehouse business model is similar for that for meat production plants except they employed retired and other desperate Americans as a first choice over illiterate Mexican Peasants (brought in by the busload, or at least they used to be).

Anyway, own the town, and such abuses are a lot easier to get away with, I'm just saying....and a look at the history of company towns (especially in the US) will show that.

All lies! The left-wing masters of the universe are the most benevolent leaders this world has ever seen! I read that on facebook plus it was fact-checked true!!!

 

[Raggedyman]

Good all the commies will be in one location, and easily locatable...

brother hog - see #6

 

[subnet]

Que the homeless invasion, good thing they are techies and can make a poop app

 

[rob0126]

Whats next, a real life farmville?