Inside Facebookville: Employees to get their own housing in $120m town Zuckerberg built
By Dan Bates
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The company already provides them with a hair salon, a laundry and bike shop.
But now Facebook employees will have even more perks and will effectively never leave the office - with an entire town built just for them.
The social network has unveiled plans for the community called Anton Menlo which will have student dorm style accommodation that will go next door to the company's campus.
Social network commute: Facebook is building an apartment community just for employees which will be located a quick five-minute bike ride away from headquarters
Living the Facebook life: The apartment complex will be called Anton Menlo and will feature a pool, doggy day care, sports bar, and bike path to campus
Taking work home: The company decided to build the complex after employees started complaining about housing shortages in Menlo Park
There will also be a pool, doggy day care, a sports bar and a bike path straight to the office.
Comfortable company: Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has helped turn his company's base in Menlo Park into more of a college campus than stereotypical corporate headquarters
The move recalls the 'company towns' of the 1800s during the Industrial Revolution when steel and mineworkers were housed in cheap tenement homes so they could work at otherwise remote sites.
But Facebook hopes that it will remove the need for employees to think about mundane tasks and instead focus on being 'creative'.
Facebook already encourages employees to spend as much time as they can with each other and puts on movie nights in the evenings on an outdoor screen.
On company game day engineers and coders take part in a three-legged race that is supposed to be a team building exercise.
After some employees asked about accommodation close to the Menlo Park, California HQ of Facebook - and with rents skyrocketing - bosses decided to make its own student dorm.
The company worked with St Anton Partners, a San Francisco Bay area architecture company, with the aim of creating a Harvard-like campus building.
The result is a $120 million community with 394 housing united and 630,000 combined square feet of rental homes.
Company people: Anton Menlo is reminiscent of company towns during the industrial revolution where entire communities were built up around factories who housed employees close to work sites in remote locations. Above, steelmill houses in Alabama
Living at work: 1950s company housing for Reynold's Metal Company in Mississippi
The apartments will be rented out at market rates which means Facebook employees will be paying at least around $2,000 to live there.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, John Tenanes, Facebook's director of real estate, said that the 'beauty of this thing is that it's extremely close to our campus'.
He said: 'It's a five-minute bike ride. You don't even have to put on the brakes'.
Bonus: Other amenities available to Facebook employees include free food, company-organized movie nights and a hair salon
Among those who are looking forward to moving in is Lauryn Hale, a Harvard Business School graduate who was hired by Facebook in 2010.
She said she loved eating frozen yoghurt at the shop on campus and that she thinks staying at Anton Menlo will allow her to have more 'walking meetings' with colleagues who she runs into on the way to the office.
A Facebook spokeswoman said: 'We're certainly excited to have more housing options closer to campus, but we believe that people work at Facebook because what they do is rewarding and they believe in our mission'.
Live In Peace & Love.
Deepak Punjabi
Baguio City
Deepak Punjabi
Baguio City
