Here is an article from WSJ´s Venture Dispatch.
“The technology start-up scene is rebounding strongly from the recession. That’s evident at 410 Townsend St. in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood.
The 75,000-square-foot office building was about 60% vacant in late 2008 when the financial crisis hit and one of the property’s major tenants moved out. Now the landlord, PMI Properties, says the building is 100% full with Internet start-ups such as microblogging service Yammer Inc., online ticket seller Eventbrite Inc., online gaming company Playdom Inc. (recently purchased by Walt Disney Co.) and help-desk software company Zendesk Inc.
All of the start-ups moved in within the last year. And many are now bursting at the seams as they grow more quickly than expected. “We’ve got a competition with Yammer to see who will outlast the other in this building and get the other’s space,” says Kevin Hartz, chief executive of Eventbrite, which has seen its staff grow from 25 last year to around 70 people now. “It’s a death match.”
The activity at 410 Townsend reflects Silicon Valley’s broader tech recovery. As demand for tech goods picks up, venture capital financing is ramping up and start-ups are recruiting new hires.
That has fueled the ferment in SoMA, a hip start-up neighborhood that is home to Twitter Inc. and others. The area’s office vacancy rate peaked in last year’s fourth quarter at 30.5% and has since eased to 28.2%, while average asking rents per square foot have risen to $28.57 from $27.69 late last year, according to real-estate firm Cornish & Carey Commercial.
Jeffrey Palmer, a partner at PMI Properties, says the firm deliberately sought tech tenants for 410 Townsend to cluster them together. Each of the 10,000-square-feet office suites in the four-story building have exposed brick walls, kitchens and state-of-the-art Internet connections.”
Read the full article here.
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