Salesforce ditched half its office space downtown San Francisco. Now it’s turning to something a little more rustic.
The cloud-based software firm leased a 75-acre site known as Trailblazer Ranch near Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Salesforce is leasing the Scotts Valley site from 1440 Multiversity for onboarding, training and socializing.
Salesforce President Brent Hyder has railed against the traditional 9-to-5 workday yet has also pushed for employees to have some degree of a connection to a physical space. Most of Salesforce’s workers are slated to return to the office at least a couple of days of the week.
“We’ll be redesigning our workspaces over time as community hubs to accommodate a more hybrid workstyle,” Hyder said in a blog post this week. “Gone are the days of a sea of desks — we’ll create more collaboration and breakout spaces to foster the human connection that can’t be replicated remotely.”
The ranch, formerly the site of Bethany University, will also offer yoga, art journaling and meditation sessions. It has 140 living suites, a communal dining hall, amphitheaters and fireplaces. CEO Marc Benioff had told the Wall Street Journal that he’d like to eventually build something more reminiscent of Disneyland for the company’s workers.
Salesforce will keep its downtown location at 350 Mission Street, where it sublet 286,000 square feet to beauty company Sephora.
San Francisco Chief Economist Ted Egan recently said that less than 20 percent of downtown San Francisco office workers had returned, trailing New York, Los Angeles and Austin.
[SF Chronicle] — Gabriel Poblete
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