Call It 'Zucker Burg': Facebook Campus Gets Its Own Main Street
Source: http://www.latimes.com
#markzuckerberg #facebook #usa #people #construction
Mark Zuckerberg wired together nearly 1 billion people on the Web. Now the ambitious young entrepreneur is building another kind of community, this one out of bricks and mortar. Construction is booming along a bustling stretch that cuts through the center of Facebook Inc.'s campus in Silicon Valley, which construction started in 2011.
Here the social networking giant is designing its own Main Street, putting in storefronts that will cater only to Facebook employees, whether they're in the mood for a straight-razor shave or nigiri rolls. As reported The Los Angeles Times it will be called "Zucker Burg".
Unlike the days of Henry Ford and George Pullman, when industrialists built towns surrounding manufacturing operations, Facebook is bringing retail shops onto its sprawling private campus on the outskirts of Menlo Park where there are few commercial establishments other than fast-food joints. The company is subsidizing the construction; handpicked merchants will offer discounted prices to employees.
High-tech superpowers such as Google Inc. and Facebook are engaged in an escalating race to pamper employees with free food and luxuries such as complimentary laundry and dry-cleaning services.
But Facebook had to come up with new carrots when it moved its headquarters a few months ago to a suburban outpost at the edge of tidal mud flats and salt marshes cut off from the rest of Menlo Park by a six-lane highway.
