LinkedIn is getting ready for a major growth spurt in the city of Sunnyvale. The career-building website has just purchased two older buildings which it apparently intends to demolish, and it will use the site to build two brand new office buildings. According to the Mercury News, LinkedIn has also signed a deal to lease a large office building nearby that is ready for use right now. Once all three buildings are ready for operation, they could be the workplace of up to 2,900 employees.
The two older buildings that LinkedIn just bought for almost $123 million are at 810 and 870 West Maude Avenue and are both around 190,000 square feet. The modern office building it just leased, which is 194,000 square feet, has the address of 684 West Maude Avenue. It is just a short distance from several other buildings used by the company. The Silicon Valley Business Journal earlier reported that LinkedIn bought the property of its headquarters at 950,1000, and 1020 West Maude Avenue which total more than 287,000 square feet. That transaction in July had a price tag of $323 million.
Once the older buildings are torn down and the new buildings are complete, they will be combined with the modern building to complete a three-building tech campus which is being marketed as a development called Catalyst. The development as a whole has already been approved by the city. The developers of Catalyst, Harvest Properties and Invesco Advisors, apparently designed the tech campus to help keep workers safe from viruses. “Tenants will have the ability to integrate customized space design features on top of a thoughtfully architected, COVID friendly base building to optimize the workplace for their employees,” the developers say on the Catalyst website.
There’s no official word yet when LinkedIn will start utilizing the new campus but developers were hoping to have them ready for use sometime in 2023. The real estate moves from LinkedIn fall right in line with other real estate actions by prominent Silicon Valley tech entities which signal that tech companies are not trying to move out of the Bay Area. Google, Apple, Meta, Adobe, and Tesla have all recently announced that they plan to expand their footprints in Silicon Valley with new buildings.
