Workday’s new HQ bringing architectural style to city’s corporate center

Workday, a fast-growing software company with headquarters on Stoneridge Mall Road in Pleasanton, firmed up its plans last week before the Pleasanton Planning Commission to build a six-story glass and steel, architecturally striking building between its main campus and Interstate 580.

The commission voted 4-1 to approve the project, with only Planning Commissioner David Nagler voting against it.

When completed, the new Workday headquarters will be one of Pleasanton’s tallest buildings at 94 feet high at the top of roof parapet and a height of 103 feet at the apex of a rectangular rooftop screen wall. Only Safeway’s former corporate headquarters near the Workday complex is taller.

In its new plan, Workday increased the number of parking spaces to 3,214 and reduced the size of its new building from 430,000 square feet to 410,000 square feet.

The office building will feature layered architecture creating a base, middle and top. The first floor will be slightly smaller in area than the upper floors to accommodate covered pedestrian arcades and to provide visual interest to the exterior of the building. The fourth and sixth floors also will be smaller to accommodate taller ceilings in portions of the third and fifth floors.

The first floor will feature storefront glass with interior and exterior columns. The upper floors will feature a glass curtain wall system with horizontal and vertical panels visible behind the glazing and aluminum mullions. At the top of the each floor, an approximately two-foot-tall portion of the glazing will have a fritted pattern of small silk-screened dots.

The form and shape of the building will be visually interesting and the materials and colors both attractive and compatible with surrounding developments and also eye-appealing to motorists driving by on the adjacent I-580 freeway.

Workday will now take its plan to the City Council on May 17 for final approval. Work on the new building is expected to start later this year.

In conjunction with this project, BART and the Pleasanton Police Department will open a jointly-operated “service center” on the ground-floor level of the adjacent BART garage. It will be Pleasanton’s first branch police station.