Uber will open its new headquarters in Mission Bay on Monday, becoming the first major employer office in San Francisco to return to work after restrictions have been lifted.
The greeting company will open alongside the Warriors’ Chase Center at 20% capacity and on a voluntary basis. The four-building complex has more than 1 million square feet, enough space for some 5,000 workers before the pandemic. Construction was completed during the pandemic.
Uber drivers, who are classified as independent contractors, were allowed to operate during the pandemic, but office workers were allowed to work remotely until September 13.
“As cities will carefully return to a new normal, so will we,” Uber said in a statement to The Chronicle.
Workers will be required to take daily health checks, including temperature checks at home to qualify. The company has been expanding cleaning services and requiring facial coatings.
Uber has about 22,000 global employees and is one of San Francisco’s largest employers. New York offices have also been reopened.
The tech giants are moving to reopen offices after San Francisco and Silicon Valley entered the state’s orange layer, allowing non-essential workplaces to resume operations. Facebook is opening its headquarters in Menlo Park on May 10 and its towers in San Francisco on June 7 if virus trends continue to improve.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said that all residents aged 50 and over will be eligible for a vaccine on April 1 and everyone aged 16 and over will be eligible on April 15.
Reuters first reported Uber’s reopening plans.
Uber was one of the fastest growing technology companies in the past decade, renting and buying more than 2 million square feet of office space in the Bay Area. But, even before the pandemic, the company listed sublease space in four buildings in the Mid-Market and downtown San Francisco, as it planned to move to its new Mission Bay buildings. It is also listing sublease spaces in other cities like New York and New York. Dallas.
Uber purchased part of Salesforce’s Mission Bay website in 2014, after the cloud computing company changed its own headquarters plans to what is now the Salesforce Tower. In 2017, Uber bought a stake in the two office buildings that are part of the Chase Center project, in partnership with the Warriors and developer Alexandria.
The pandemic has weakened Uber’s core business and boosted food delivery from Uber Eats. Uber laid off 6,700 employees last May and bought rival Postmates in December.
Roland Li is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @rolandlisf