After announcing last March that the Pac-12 conference will leave their San Francisco offices by June 2023, the conference has reportedly picked its new home.
According to George Avalos of The Mercury News, the Pac-12 will lease a 42,000-square-foot office space in San Ramon, California, about a 40-minute drive inland from San Francisco. The Bishop Ranch business park will be the home of the Pac-12’s production studio, where about 850 live events a year will be produced, and will have more than 100 employees and freelancers on gameday.
The Pac-12 is expected to move to the new place this summer. While financials weren’t revealed, based on information revealed last year, the biggest motivator to moving may be the cost of rent.
Last March, it was revealed that the Pac-12 was paying about $8.35 million per year in rent for their conference headquarters. That monumental number dwarfed anything the SEC ($318,000) or Big Ten ($1.5 million) pay for rent. At that time, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff announced that the conference would move out of San Francisco and have most employees continue to work from home to save on rent. The decision was estimated to save each Pac-12 school about $7 million over the next decade.
Places like San Ramon are in higher demand for companies in recent years. With rent rising in cities like San Francisco, and office space not being as crucial due to a wider acceptance of working from home, a town like San Ramon is within close range to other companies within Silicon Valley that they can be a viable cost-effective alternative.
