Two months ago a plugged-in reader first reported a deal with Macys.com was in the works to lease 250k square feet at 680 Folsom Street. Yesterday, a 15-year lease for 242,573 square feet on floors 8 through 14 at 680 Folsom was officially announced.
With a projected re-opening in late 2013, 680 Folsom Street is now 80 percent pre-leased.
Good news on the jobs front. But I still think it’s a shame they are skinning this nice old building. It’s classic 70’s, and it is going to look so generic as a glass wall IMO.
Snark17, no disrespect, but is that sarcasm?
Because that building in its current state is hideous. I feel like you just said, “I’m bummed that Playgirl decided to replace the full frontal of Karl Rove with some generic metrosexual from Men’s Fitness”.
The new building is fine – nothing Earth shattering, probably a little generic, but clean and open. The old building looks like a haunted phone company.
Classic 70s office building architecture, lol.. Never heard that.
Seriously I like it the way it is. It has a nice texture to it, and I like the plane on top, and I like the sandstone color. Out of fashion now, of course, but I still think it had something nice going for it.
Count me in as somebody that prefers the original look. Each building has its own place in time. This is the equivalent of plastic surgery.
I have to wonder if the people longing for the old building have actually seen it in person. You guys, it’s not just ugly, it’s very run down as well. I’m not sure why we should preserve ugly architecture as some sort of time stamp. Are people going to be saying this about the Watermark 30 years from now?
https://sf.localwiki.org/AT&T_Folsom_Street_Facility
Interesting history on this building which formerly went by the address better associated with behavior inside the building: 666 Folsom St.
Also remember there was some issue with “sick building syndrome” with this building, which may be driving the extent of the renovations. The old skin had no where near enough window area to be appealing as an office building.
OneEyedMan – That locaklwiki writeup on the building is about the infamous “Y” splitter that a whistle blower found on the main overseas internet feed. And the NSA wasn’t just listening in on phone calls but the entire datastream passing through that network. I’m sure that they still do monitor communications, just elsewhere.
As for the merits of this building’s 70s era facade, it does nothing for me personally. I do like the preservation of period specific facades even when they’re out of style because they almost always find new fans later in life. But save that for the buildings that embody more of a stylistic expression. There are plenty of 70s era buildings with flair, save those instead.
OneEyedMan & Milkshake:
The building where the call intercept effort occurred was 611 Folsom, which is across the street and up the hill from the former 666 Folsom Street (now re-labeled 680 Folsom). AT&T still occupies 611 Folsom.
The 666 Folsom Street building was used for clerical functions only, such as accounting support. There never was any telephone network support functions housed there.