Meta recently left the office space it occupied in Mountain View at The Village at San Antonio Center, ending its longterm lease for the newly built office buildings.

In a statement responding to the lease termination, the tech giant told the Voice it's aiming to build “a best-in-class remote work experience.”

“The future of work is here and we’re embracing it at Meta,” said Tessa Giammona with Meta’s corporation communications. “The past few years have brought new possibilities around the role of the office, and we are prioritizing making focused, balanced investments to support our most strategic longterm priorities and lead the way in creating the workplace of the future.”

According to Mountain View city officials, The Village at San Antonio Center includes two office buildings, each with ground-floor retail-commercial space.

“WeWork holds the lease on the two office buildings and some of the ground-floor commercial space,” said Lenka Wright, the city’s chief communications officer. “Facebook (now Meta) was their only lessee for the office area, and there are no other office tenants in the Village at San Antonio.”

Though Meta no longer occupies two office spaces at 391 and 401 San Antonio Road, which it had originally committed to until 2034, Giammona said the company remains “firmly committed to the San Francisco Bay Area as evidenced by the thousands of Meta employees who live and work here.”

Mountain View’s not the only location where Meta is vacating offices and shifting toward a remote model. The Silicon Valley Business Journal reported that on the other side of the country, the company has "backed out of roughly 200,000 square feet it occupied at 225 Park Ave. in Manhattan, saying that it no longer needed the space,” an Oct. 12 article said. “It also over the summer paused plans to build out Hudson Yards, where it leased more than 1.5 million square feet pre-pandemic, and reversed plans on a 300,000-square-foot expansion at Vornado Realty Trust’s 770 Broadway in New York City."

Peter Katz, president and CEO of the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce, told the Voice that businesses in the city are continuing to assess the impact of the pandemic and how to adjust going forward.

“Some are saying, we think we can fill it or we think we can either do something else in the space, or actually we will be hiring that number over the next couple years and it’s more economical to hold onto it,” Katz said. “Others are looking to totally vacate. So it really depends.”

In Meta’s case, Katz added, the company issued a statement last year giving its employees the option to work remotely for anyone whose job can be done at home.

“I think all companies are dealing with the fact that more people will be working remote, and what they want to do with the space,” Katz said.