Twitter announced this bright Friday afternoon in San Francisco that the company has signed a different agreement to stay in the city. Hardly moving more than a mile, the company’s headquarters will be relocated from 795 Folsom dead center in the SoMa district to Market Square, a historic building in the Central Market.
It was all but certain when, in the first week of April, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a tax break for growing companies like Twitter if they moved or retained their offices to the Mid-Market and Tenderloin districts west of downtown. We were just waiting on official word from Twitter, which we have today.
A major part of the tax benefit for Twitter is that it won’t have to pay higher payroll taxes for new hires here on out. That’s huge, especially if the company keeps growing and expanding its 350+ team into the thousands. I asked Matt Graves, Director of Communications at Twitter, whether the company has any forecasts for how many people they’ll be hiring in the coming year or so, but he declined to comment.
“San Francisco’s unique creativity and inventiveness is a part of Twitter’s DNA, and we feel like we are part of San Francisco,” writes Sean Garrett, VP of Communications. “Three-quarters of our employees who live in San Francisco are involved in causes and charities in the city. Our employees are excited to be active members of our future neighborhood as volunteers, customers, diners and patrons of the arts.”
Perhaps predictably, Garrett makes no mention of the sweet tax incentives the city has promised Twitter.
The company says it will be among the first companies moving to the areas outlined by the Board of Supervisors, but there is no specific timetable yet. We’re told to expect the move to happen in mid-2012.
