From Marketwatch.com:
Yelp’s old-is-new San Francisco headquarters – Commentary: Historic high-rise was once home to Baby Bell PT&T
Therese Poletti’s Tech Tales Archives – Nov. 29, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Word in the bubbly start-up community is that Silicon Valley has effectively moved to San Francisco, and Yelp Inc. is the latest example.
After a recent visit to the new headquarters of Yelp, it’s easy to understand why so many tech-sector employees and employers prefer to be based here instead of in the blander valley to the south — even as San Francisco rents soar and observers bemoan a new dot-com bubble.
Over Labor Day weekend, Yelp moved into its new offices in a recently renovated skyscraper a stone’s throw from the city’s Financial District. Several characteristics would be familiar to anyone who’s visited one of Silicon Valley’s tech campuses — casual attire, areas for fun and games, espresso bars — but in other respects a location in the city helps create a unique environment.
Unlike the sanitized office parks that Silicon Valley is famous for, Yelp’s new offices are in one of San Francisco’s earliest skyscrapers, a relic of the building boom of the Roaring ’20s. The 26-story Art Deco building was once owned by Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., or PT&T, one of the Baby Bell subsidiaries of AT&T Inc. The building, now named for its address, 140 New Montgomery, was designed by the well-regarded local architect Timothy Pflueger. Like an early version of Google Inc.’s Googleplex, Pacific Telephone developed ways to keep its employees inside the building, with a cafeteria for employees — most of whom were women — and an auditorium for special events, lectures, parties, bridal showers and exercise classes.
“We are kind of the new Pac Bell or AT&T,” said John Lieu, director of real estate and facilities for Yelp.
Today, the business-review site, which has been growing steadily but losing money since it was founded in 2004, occupies nine floors in the recently reopened building. The high-rise had been unoccupied since AT&T, which ended up merging with SBC and the vestiges of Pacific Bell/Telesis), moved out in 2007. The current owners, developers Wilson Meany and Stockbridge Capital Partners, bought the iconic building in 2008 for $118 million, with that price including a nearby parking garage. Initially, the developers planned to convert the building to a residential condominium, but the recession and financial crisis put those plans on ice.
Last year, once the developers decided to rework the building as an office block, work began on the ambitious renovation. The building is now nearly 90% leased.
Yelp’s top executives chose the space after looking at office space in “many, many buildings” in San Francisco, Lieu said, because of the building’s character and history and because Yelp “wanted a space to accommodate our size and our growth.”
Lieu and other Yelp-ers, including Chief Executive Jeremy Stoppelman, saw the building long before the $80 million–plus revamp was complete. The large number of available floors was an attraction, as were such features as operable windows, rarely available in contemporary office buildings. The building also has parking for about 200 bikes in its basement, with lockers, showers and a “bike spa” to work on or tune up a bike. About 65 Yelp workers are said to arrive regularly via bicycle, and the company has staked a claim to 100 of the building’s bike-parking spaces. All systems have been upgraded, including the building’s elevators. And Yelp has a dedicated elevator.
The building also has fantastic views of San Francisco, the Bay Bridge and the Financial District. Take that, Silicon Valley. (Even if those vistas, for now, are marred by construction cranes, which seem to be everywhere these days in San Francisco.)
The interiors of Yelp’s office are quirky and fun, done up in a style that seeks to reflect the company’s business and its culture. In its main visitor lobby, on the ninth floor, a pane of glass is painted with a sign that reads “The General Store. ” Displays in the reception area showcase employee-designed paint cans, glasses, bottles and T-shirts, all local-business-themed. An antique cash register from the National Cash Register Co. (now, of course, better known as NCR Corp.) that sits on the reception desk was found on Craig’s List.
The company’s work spaces are open-concept in design, which is the norm for modern tech workplaces. Lieu, formerly with Facebook and before that eBay, said that the open-plan environment is great for collaboration. Lieu conceded that an open-plan,low-privacy environment wouldn’t work for, say, lawyers or accountants.
I heard earlier this year of a company that provided its engineers with big whiteboards to use at their open-plan workstations. The engineers used them instead to construct ad hoc cubicles. But Yelp has built in plenty of space for quiet, with small, enclosed rooms bearing such names as Tool Shed, Ski Resort and Library. There are also areas set aside for fun, with such toys on hand as a pool table and videogame consoles on the eighth floor, where CEO Stoppelman convenes all-hands meetings, and a bar area for after-hours gatherings.
Lieu recalled that when he first visited the building, it was a warren of hallways and small offices with doors and transom windows, and in general not conducive to today’s work habits. Developer Wilson Meany gutted the interior office spaces, leaving exposed brick walls and concrete floors and columns. Yelp worked with San Francisco interior-design firm Studio O+A, and together they crafted a rustic look, incorporating natural wood with the exposed brick and concrete — and repurposing as many of those old PT&T office doors as possible — in an effort to create a less corporate atmosphere.
Many historical details can still be found throughout, such as the marble wainscoting in the elevator lobbies and stairwells. The original building lobby is intact and has been restored.
About 800 Yelp employee, out of its total workforce of 1,700, work in the building, and Yelp holds an option to rent more space as necessary. But the company, like most tech companies today, was careful not to commit itself to its forecast for future employee needs.
“As we continue to grow, we are hiring in most departments,” said Yelp spokesman Vince Sollitto. “Our sales department will likely add the largest number of new team members, but we’re also looking for engineering talent and new community managers as we expand into new Yelp markets around the world.”
While, personally, I am not too keen on all of the changes to the old office building (full disclosure: I wrote a book on architect Pflueger), suffice it to say that, even with its more contemporary look, Yelp boasts some of the cooler offices in town. And it’s great to see this old building in spirited use once again.