John Tenanes

Everyone in real estate is looking at Facebook, and not because of the news feed or photos of your friends’ vacations.

Mark Zuckerberg’s social media behemoth is playing a huge role in the “will-they-won’t-they” discussion regarding the amount of space that top-tier firms need after the pandemic. John Tenanes is leading Facebook’s real estate strategy in a time when it may be more consequential than ever, so he has more than just square feet and office views to consider.

In announcements that likely kept some office brokers up at night, Facebook was one of the first big-name companies last year to announce that employees would be working remotely until at least July 2021, and that the company would be shifting as many as half of the firm’s employees to work from home over the next decade. It is a major upset to the commercial real estate market and has broadly impacted the wider market discussion.

So did Facebook’s leases. Prior to the pandemic, Facebook notably leased 1.5 million square feet at three of Related Companies’ Hudson Yards towers. During COVID, Facebook reportedly beat out Apple to take about 730,000 square feet at Vornado Realty Trust’s Farley Post Office conversion.

The deal is a pretty important sign for office real estate, considering that Vornado is spending more than $1 billion to redevelop the nearly 100-year-old building. Indeed, Peter Riguardi, chairman and president of JLL’s tri-state region, told Commercial Observer that the Farley Post Office decision is “bigger than just that decision.” And CBRE Vice Chairman Sacha Zarba said the lease was real support “for the need to have an office.”

On its home turf on the West Coast, Facebook has also been the force behind some of the more encouraging developments. About one year ago — when leasing activity in Los Angeles plummeted to its lowest point since the Great Recession — Facebook added 84,600 square feet to its existing lease at Tishman Speyer’s Brickyard campus, where it was already signed to 220,000 square feet.

And Oculus, the virtual-reality subsidiary of Facebook, has started to build out a 18.13-acre campus for its headquarters in Burlingame, Calif., after signing a 12.5-year lease that commenced in August 2020. The 803,000-square-foot property, called Burlingame Point, comprises four Class A office/life science buildings and an amenity building, and developer Kylli just landed a $750 million refinance for it last month.—G.C.