The San Francisco skyline has a new crown jewel. Salesforce Tower will be the city’s tallest and most expensive building upon completion in July 2017. The 1,070-foot high-rise is expected to cost developer Boston Properties $1.1 billion.
On April 6, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff held a ceremony at Salesforce Tower to commemorate the end of the structural phase of construction. “It seems like everywhere I am in this city or around the Bay, I can see this tower,” Benioff said.
Business Insider checked out the glittering behemoth from inside. Take a look.
Salesforce and its billionaire CEO Marc Benioff are riding high these days.
Salesforce celebrated 18 years in business earlier this year. It was named No. 8 on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2017, and the cloud-computing company is on track to become a $100 billion organization in the next three years, according to some analysts.
The near-completion of Salesforce Tower is the cherry on top. It rises 61 stories over the city’s Financial District, making it the tallest occupiable building west of Chicago.
It was originally named Transbay Tower, but the enterprise giant bought the naming rights in a landmark real-estate deal. Salesforce will pay developer Boston Properties close to $560 million over 15 and a half years to lease 30 floors at Mission and Fremont streets.
Approximately 70% of the 1.4 million-square-foot building has been leased to other companies, including Bain & Company, Accenture, and CBRE real estate group.
“It’s a great deal more than simply another office building,” said Fred Clarke of Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects. He called it a “display of optimism” that San Francisco’s future is bright.
There are some 700 construction workers on site every day, working around the clock to complete Salesforce Tower by its July 2017 target date, according to Boston Properties.
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Clarke noted that the building is “firmly and safely socketed into earth’s bedrock” — a slight dig at the tower’s next-door neighbor, the leaning, sinking Millennium Tower.
Salesforce Tower has a slender, tapering silhouette with curved corners. Thirteen-foot-high ceilings and 10-foot continuous glass windows will provide abundant daylight.
Each floor will have metal sunshades, which are basically automated awnings. They move throughout the day to maximize light and prevent the sun from overheating the offices.
The tower has direct access to the new Transbay Transit Center, which is under construction next door. It will connect eight Bay Area counties through 11 transit systems.
Transbay Transit Center
Salesforce Tower is expected to hold 10,000 Salesforce employees — about one-third of the company’s global workforce — by the end of 2017, according to Benioff.
“I can’t tell you how many times people say to me, ‘Well, where’s your office going to be on the top floor?’ I don’t have an office on the top floor!” Benioff said.
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While Salesforce offices take up the bottom 30 floors, the company will also lease the top two floors. They will function as communal spaces for team meetings and events.
Benioff said the 61st floor is called the “Ohana Floor,” a nod to the company’s community-centric culture and his own obsession with Hawaii. (Ohana means “family” in Hawaiian.) Salesforce will allow nonprofit groups and NGOs to rent the event space for free.
Salesforce Tower would sit in the shadows of many skyscrapers in cities like New York or Dubai. But in San Francisco, it towers over the city’s best-known landmarks.
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