San Francisco-based Lyft to put 250,000 square feet of its headquarters up for sale
The lobby of Lyft headquarters on Monday, November 14, 2016, in San Francisco.
Liz Hafalia/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty ImagesThe ride-hailing tech giant Lyft is reportedly reducing its San Francisco headquarters’ square footage by more than half by 2023.
As first reported by the San Francisco Business Times Wednesday, Lyft is dumping 85,000 square feet of real estate once the lease expires in early 2023. The Business Times adds that Lyft will later let go of an additional 160,000 square feet, cutting its massive Berry Street headquarters by nearly 250,000 square feet.
In all, Lyft’s 419,000-square-foot headquarters, according to one report, is “the length of nearly four football fields.”
“While we continue to believe that in-person connections are important, many of our team members opted to work remotely after we shifted to a flexible workplace strategy,” Lyft vice president of real estate development Rachel Goldstein said in a statement. “As a result, we have identified a significant amount of office space that isn’t being utilized the way it previously was.”
The move comes months after Lyft announced that it would pivot to a “fully flexible workplace” without strict mandates on when and where workers are required to be located.
“Our approach will always be about bringing people together, not forcing them together,” the company said in its March announcement. A Lyft spokesperson told SFGATE that office traffic has declined “consistently” since the announcement was made.
Lyft is just one of many Silicon Valley tech companies to embrace this push for remote work — and abandon office space as a result — along with Square and Yelp. (The notable holdouts are Google and Apple, the latter of which will require employees to return to the office three days a week after Labor Day to employee chagrin.)
The Wall Street Journal also notes that Lyft will sublease nearly half of a combined 615,000 square feet of office space in San Francisco, New York City, Nashville and Seattle. The spokesperson explained that a section of the floor or an entire floor could be subleased, but that this office space would have different entrances and exits from Lyft.
In July, Lyft announced that it would close down Lyft Rentals, its first-person rentals service, and laid off 60 workers primarily in that division. The layoffs also led to the closure of an office in Northern California.