Twitter proposes sky bridge to link San Francisco offices

Photo: Codi Mills, The Chronicle Photo: Codi Mills, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Twitter proposes sky bridge to link San Francisco offices 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Twitter has proposed building a sky bridge connecting the two buildings that make up the microblogging service’s San Francisco headquarters, part of an effort to transform its Mid-Market presence into a sort of urban campus.

The company said the proposition, which is awaiting city approval, is simply a matter of efficiency. Traversing its two properties at 1 10th St. and 1355 Market St. now requires employees to exit one building and cross the Stevenson Street alleyway to enter the other. And, from Twitter’s perspective, that time spent riding elevators and crossing the street is precious time wasted.

“It would take at least five minutes per employee to go down an elevator, out of one building, into the other, and up the elevator to the right floor,” a company statement explained. “It just makes sense.”

The proposed bridge would span Stevenson Street, which Twitter has worked to transform into an urban plaza.

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A spokesperson with the Department of Planning said the proposal has not yet been reviewed. Twitter did not immediately disclose details for the walkway.

Twitter recently leased the 10th Street property. When the company moved into its present Art Deco Market Street headquarters in June 2012, it was offered a six-year payroll tax break for remaining in San Francisco rather than relocating to the tech industry’s traditional core in Silicon Valley.

The city hoped that turning Mid-Market into a tech hub would help rejuvenate the area and required tech companies receiving the tax break to sign community benefit agreements outlining plans to give back to the neighborhood.

Urban campuses like the one Twitter is assembling are seemingly the new aesthetic of the tech industry, increasingly replacing the sprawling Silicon Valley campuses of companies like Facebook and Google. More than two dozen Silicon Valley companies relocated to San Francisco in 2012 and 2013. And many new companies such as Pinterest, Twitter and Dropbox have chosen to set up headquarters in San Francisco early on.

As the companies have migrated to the city, they have also largely imported the Silicon Valley tech campus model, building all-inclusive environments that give employees few reasons to venture into the neighborhood and patronize local businesses.

Critics have argued that such campuses offer surrounding communities little benefit. A recent city controller’s report offered some support for this theory, showing that while the tax break has lured a smattering of new high-rise developments and 61 new businesses to the area, total sales taxes along Market Street rose just 10 percent between 2010 and 2013, compared with 25 percent in the rest of the city. The report concluded that the tax break’s overall impact on the city’s economy was likely “quite limited.”

The bridge would give Twitter workers fewer reasons to leave the campus during the day — but a spokesman for the company says it wouldn’t reduce their contributions to the community.

“Employees would otherwise be going between the buildings at ground level via the Stevenson Street alleyway,” said Jim Prosser, a Twitter spokesman, “so the only businesses they’d be encountering would be the ones at the lower level of 1355 Market Street which, since they work at our headquarters, they’re likely to encounter anyway in their comings and goings on a daily basis.”

Kristen V. Brown is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kbrown@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kristenvbrown