News

Facebook Joins London’s 1M SF Club

Photo credit: Courtesy of King's Cross Limited Partnership
Facebook's New King's Cross Hq

Facebook has taken its London office footprint to more than 1M SF with a deal for a huge new office at King’s Cross Central, making it one of only seven occupiers to break the seven-figure mark.

The tech firm will pre-lease 611K SF across three buildings which will now be built at King’s Cross Central, housing 6,000 workers. The leasing deal highlights the scale of its growth plans for the U.K. — Facebook currently employs just 2,300 people here.

Staff at the new buildings will work on the Oculus Go virtual reality project and other projects, many of which will be based on artificial intelligence. The buildings will open in 2021.

Facebook occupies 88K SF at 10 Brock St. near Euston and 247K at Rathbone Place just off Oxford Street and, according to Estates Gazette, has agreed to take all of the 140K SF leased by WeWork at 125 Shaftesbury Ave. on a two-year deal, taking its total lease exposure to 1.1M SF.

That makes it the latest occupier in London to lease more than 1M SF of office space. Google will lease 1.4M SF when its own 1M SF office at King's Cross Central opens in 2019. Amazon is not far behind with 920K SF of London office space.

Tech firms are catching up with the banks that have typically been the largest private-sector occupiers of office space in London. Goldman Sachs is trimming its office footprint from 1.7M SF to 850K SF. Barclays and HSBC are keeping up the fight in banking, with 1.3M SF apiece, as is JP Morgan with 1M SF. Citi is the only other bank occupying more than 1M SF, but is looking to sublet some of its 1.1M SF at Canary Wharf.

When all of its offices open, WeWork will be the largest private-sector occupier in London with 2.6M SF and counting.

King’s Cross Central is being developed by Argent and the majority owner is AustralianSuper. Savills and Cushman & Wakefield provided leasing advice to the owners and BCLP provided legal advice.

Continue reading this story with a free account

Log in or register
Sign up for more articles like this
Subscribe to Bisnow's London Newsletters
Related Stories

JVP Development Is Betting $37M Of Its Own Money That Frisco Is Ready For Spec Office

Hedge Fund Bids $88M For Spirit Airlines' Former HQ

Avison Young Had Assets Frozen By Bank Over Unpaid Taxes

Equinix Bets Big On Slough Data Centres: The London Deal Sheet

Oyster Point's Second Phase Half-Leased As Kilroy Navigates Soft Lab Demand

BXP Closes In On Next D.C. Office Development As It Shrinks Assets

Clarion Under Contract To Sell 18-Story Seaport Office Tower

Oil Company Expands Again At Cash Register Building

Redevco Buys 560K SF Jaguar Land Rover Logistics Hub In UK IOS Push

BXP's 343 Madison Lands $1.2B Loan, Nears Deal With Equity Partner

D.C. Sues To Block HUD Headquarters Move To Virginia

Ken Griffin Completes Takeover Of Brickell Block, Setting Stage For $2.5B Megaproject