Facebook Buys 56-Acre Silicon Valley Industrial Park

To those who love Facebook, any reason for the company's expansion is probably a good thing—more employees, more brains, and more people working on Facebook's ultimate vision of making the world a more connected place.

To those in Silicon Valley, however, campus expansions from the area's tech bigwigs usually means one thing—more traffic. At least, that's the first thing we thought of when we heard that Facebook had officially completed the purchase of a 21-building, 56-acre industrial park from real estate company Prologis.

"Land constraints and increased urbanization pressures in markets such as Silicon Valley support the monetization of select infill assets," said Michael Curless, Prologis chief investment officer, in a statement.

"This project and others in our portfolio benefit from our dedicated team who understand how to identify and unlock the intrinsic value in our value-added conversion properties."

The new industrial park, which Prologis has owned since 1998, will continue to be managed by the real state company "on behalf of Facebook," reports Venturebeat. Facebook paid approximately $400 million or so for the space, though it's not quite clear what Facebook plans to do with the new area just yet.

If anything, Facebook representatives seem to be hinting that they plan to do absolutely nothing with the location right now.

"Facebook will continue to grow over time, and there's a limited supply of land. This is really looking at our future," said Facebook's John Tenanes, vice president of real estate and security, in an interview with the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

As a result of the Prologic purchase, Facebook now owns four Menlo Park locations all relatively close to one another: 57 acres it leased in 2011, the former Sun Microsystems campus; a 22-acre location that will be the site of Facebook's new headquarters (designed by Frank Gehry); a 60-acre campus it purchased from TE Connectivity; and the new 56-acre Prologis location.

The company's biggest challenge so far, however, seems to be just how it will end up linking all of its campuses together—for walking, biking, and however else employees might shuffle around.

"We think there is a way to do it. We can create pedestrian paths, use the inactive Dumbarton rail line in some way, and potentially build bike bridges. There will be many different options for both neighbors and Facebook employees to get back and forth," said Tenanes, as reported by the Silicon Valley Business Journal.