Snap Inc. Wants to Chop Its Santa Monica Office Space: Sources
The parent company of the social media platform Snapchat is reversing course on its HQ expansion
By Greg Cornfield December 4, 2023 11:05 am
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Snapchat wants to hit unsend on its office expansions from a couple of years ago.
Snap Inc. — the parent company of the social media platform — is backtracking on its office expansion at Santa Monica Business Park (SMBP), sources have told Commercial Observer. One source estimated the publicly traded company will cut around 160,000 square feet, while another said Snap wanted to downsize the space by about 75 percent, which would amount to ditching more than 300,000 square feet.
Concrete details are scarce as neither the landlord, Boston Properties (BXP), nor Snap, nor the listed brokerage agents returned requests for comments or additional information.
Snap first leased about 300,000 square feet in a 10-year deal at SMBP for its new headquarters in 2017 when the campus was already home to popular video game producer Activision Blizzard and music and radio streaming platform Pandora. In summer 2021, CO broke the news that Snap was expanding by another 145,000 square feet at SMBP by taking over more than 65 percent of the space vacated by Activision Blizzard.
Snap then announced in August 2022 that it was laying off 20 percent of its workforce, and then said a few months later that staff would be required to be in the office four days a week, per Bloomberg.
Boston Properties acquired its 55 percent ownership of the 1.2 million-square-foot SMBP on Ocean Park Boulevard from Blackstone (BX) for $627.5 million in 2018.
Gregory Cornfield can be reached at gcornfield@commercialobserver.com.
