Salesforce announces plans for new San Francisco headquarters

The CRM giant Salesforce.com announced Friday plans for a new world headquarters in San Francisco — one that expands the company’s workspace by 700,000 square feet and boosts its workforce by an estimated 1,000 employees. According to Salesforce, the namesake tower and footprint expansion makes the company the largest tech employer in the startup saturated San Francisco area.

Salesforce unveiled plans for a new, 61-story Salesforce Tower at 415 Mission Street in San Francisco to expand its worldwide headquarters, and as part of that it’s filed an 8-K form with the SEC with the details of how much it will be investing to do so. The CRM giant will pay $560 million over a period of 15 years starting 2018 to lease space, with an additional $130 million on top of that for for leasehold improvements, amounting to a total of outlay of $680 million. Salesforce’s move is also an interesting development considering the ongoing debatesabout tech workers who live in San Francisco and are accused of putting a strain on the residential market, some of whom do not work in the city itself — resulting in a string of protests around the busses that they use for their commutes. One suggested solution has been to ramp up high-density housing (read: skyscrapers, not unlike the Salesforce Tower), which has its own drawbacks.