Twitter signs new lease to keep headquarters in San Francisco
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It’s official -- Twitter is staying in San Francisco.
On Friday, Twitter announced that it had signed a lease to move the micro-blogging service’s headquarters into the Central Market area’s Market Square building, also known as the San Francisco Mart building.
The move will bring to fruition a promise Twitter made in a letter of intent to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that said the social networking site would stay in the city if a payroll tax exemption was approved. Twitter had been expected to leave San Francisco if the exemption had not passed.
In a 8-to-3 vote this month, the supervisors approved an ordinance that gave Twitter and other tech firms what they were looking for -- an exemption from a 1.5% city payroll tax for the next six years, as long as a business is located in San Francisco’s Central Market Street and Tenderloin areas.
‘The city where we have started and grown will remain our future home,’ said Sean Garrett, Twitter’s vice president of communications, in a blog post. ‘Twitter is staying in San Francisco and has signed a lease to move our headquarters to Market Square, a historic building in San Francisco’s Central Market neighborhood.’
Garrett said Twitter looks forward to being part of an expected wave of companies that will move into the Central Market and Tenderloin areas, which San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee has said badly need to be revitalized.
‘San Francisco’s unique creativity and inventiveness is a part of Twitter’s DNA, and we feel like we are part of San Francisco,’ Garrett said. ‘Three-quarters of our employees who live in San Francisco are involved in causes and charities in the city. Our employees are excited to be active members of our future neighborhood as volunteers, customers, diners and patrons of the arts.’
Twitter expects to make the move from its current headquarters in the South of Market area of the city into the Market Square building sometime in the middle of 2012, he said.
‘We can’t wait,’ Garrett said.
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles