Following Salesforce's lead, the healthcare giant will relocate to a high-rise urban headquarters, transitioning out of seven locations it currently occupies in the East Bay.
Kaiser Permanente's planned new headquarters will encompass 1.6 million square feet of floor space, making it "one of the largest new buildings in the Bay Area — larger in space, though not height, than San Francisco's Salesforce Tower," Roland Li writes.
The healthcare corporation, already Oakland's largest employer, will consolidate over 7,000 employees from seven locations into the new 29-story tower, which is set to open in 2023. Occupying a site currently graced with "a parking garage and vacant lots," the new headquarters will be dubbed the Kaiser Permanente Thrive Center and cost a total of $900 million, saving the firm $60 million a year compared with its current set-up.
Kaiser's move makes it one of the latest major firms to set up shop downtown, moving away from the suburban office park mode. "The building is comparable in size to the huge suburban buildings occupied by tech giants Facebook and Google in Silicon Valley," Li writes.
FULL STORY: Kaiser Permanente to build giant, new $900 million Oakland headquarters
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