Nearly two years after Twitter arrived in Boulder following its acquisition of Gnip, the company said it will move operations and double-down on the city’s downtown.

Twitter has leased the top two floors of The Wencel Building at 1301 Walnut St. With twice the space at 30,000 square feet, the building also will have room to double Twitter’s local staff, currently around 100 employees.

“We’ve grown about 20 percent since the time of acquisition, and we’re actually accelerating that growth with the new space,” said Chris Moody, vice president of data strategy who also was Gnip’s CEO when Twitter acquired it in April 2014. “We’re designing it on day one to hold more than 200 people.”

The company has 15 job openings in Boulder.

Twitter’s local expansion may surprise some company watchers. When co-founder Jack Dorsey returned as Twitter’s CEO last fall, one of his first decisions was to cut 8 percent of the company’s 4,100 employees. However, the Boulder office appears untouched by the layoffs and has about the same number of workers as it did in July.

Dorsey, who went to Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School in Boulder, may have a soft spot for the area. But it’s also because the Boulder operation focuses on big data and business users. The team helps clients extract better insight from the Twitterverse.

“What they’re asking for is a crystal ball,” Moody said. “They want to know what is going to happen next and how can I plan for it — Twitter being the largest searchable database. … In many ways, Twitter’s data set ends up being a crystal ball.”

The Boulder office builds tools to help companies find trends, like sniffing out new Tweets on dietary trends that could lead a food company to change how it markets products.

During last week’s earnings report, Twitter told shareholders that it is committed to investing in developers and is “beginning efforts to streamline our customer service features and create tools so that businesses can scale more of their customer service activity on Twitter versus traditional service channels.”

That was a direct nod to the Boulder office, Moody said.

The move to the new office will occur by this fall. The Wencel building is just a few blocks from Twitter’s current location, which was Gnip’s home.

The four-story building, being developed by W.W. Reynolds Companies, is under construction. It offers 60,000 square feet of Class A office and retail space, plus electric car charging stations and outdoor balconies. It is expected to be available this quarter, according to a company brochure.

“We couldn’t be more excited and honored that Twitter has chosen The Wencel Building to expand its presence here in Boulder,” said Bill Reynolds, founder of W.W. Reynolds, in a statement.

New office space, especially in a downtown area, is typically the most expensive. Boulder’s downtown rents are the second-highest in the region, at $42 per square foot, according to CBRE, a real estate broker that tracks the office market. Denver’s Lower Downtown neighborhood is the leader, with Class A space going for $44.08.

Other tech companies decided to expand elsewhere. Google, for example, is building a new Boulder campus a few miles east of downtown with room for up to 1,500 people.

But Twitter wanted to stay downtown. Moody pointed to Twitter’s headquarters. It’s in downtown San Francisco — not an hour south in Silicon Valley, Moody said.

“We only had a few hard truths, and one was we wanted to remain downtown,” Moody said. “It’s very consistent with our support of the downtown community.”

In Boulder, Twitter’s workforce is heavy on engineers. Moody calls company salaries “competitive” and said they have to be to attract senior engineers. The appeal of being downtown and close to nature has also helped the Boulder office attract people from either coast.

“And they’re at a place where they want to combine all the challenges with a lifestyle change that works for them. They want a shorter commute and more ready access to outdoor activities,” Moody said. “We’re seeing a giant influx of people coming from New York, Boston and L.A. that have worked for a top-tier company.”

Tamara Chuang: tchuang@denverpost.com or visit dpo.st/tamara