Meta Platforms is making a splash in downtown Austin.
The company, formerly known as Facebook, leased all the office space in the Sixth and Guadalupe building, which will be the tallest tower in the Texas capital, according to the Austin Business Journal. It rented 589,000 square feet across 33 floors in the building, which is under construction at 400 West Sixth Street.
Rising 875 feet, the 66-story tower will be the first Austin high-rise with a total of a million square feet. In addition to offices, it will have 349 residential units on the 34th to 66th floors and 10,000 square feet of retail space. Construction on the commercial portion of the building was finished in late 2021. The building is expected to be complete in 2023.
The company sealed the deal Dec. 31. It’s the second-largest office lease in downtown Austin, according to ABJ. Google has leased a high-rise with 723,000 rentable square feet that’s under construction at 601 West Second Street.
Dallas-based Lincoln Property Company Commercial, San Antonio’s Kairoi Residential and San Francisco’s Divco West Real Estate Services are developing Sixth and Guadalupe. Gensler, also based in San Francisco, is the architect. JE Dunn Construction Group, from Kansas City, is the general contractor.
Meta will still lease other Austin offices, including multiple floors at 300 West Sixth Street downtown and the space it leases in the Third + Shoal Tower at 607 West Third Street—256,500 square feet across 11 floors. Meta also leases all 320,000 square feet of offices in the 17-story Domain 12 tower in North Austin, the same neighborhood where Amazon recently rented 330,000 square feet in a planned building.
The tech company has about 2,000 employees in Austin and aims to add 400 more. It has announced plans to reopen U.S. offices at the end of January, although employees can defer their return until June.
[ABJ] — Cindy Widner
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